


Be Not Afraid

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: M/M, Psychological Horror, Recreational Drug Use, SERIOUSLY GRAPHIC GORE IN THE LAST CHAPTER, Supernatural Elements, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:21:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: Armed with only his laptop and his dreams of writing the next Great American Movie, Porter Robinson moves across the country looking for inspiration. Instead he finds Dillon, who’s a bad idea but might be exactly what Porter’s looking for. And the nightmares that seem to be following him into reality are probably nothing at all.





	1. on the ground (m machine remix) - rubblebucket

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to molly for being my initial inspiration, sounding board, and beta and to jupiter for showing me the chapter title song and for being so unwaveringly supportive. love you all thank u for pushing me through writing this  
> chapter title from the song on the ground by rubblebucket (m machine remix)
> 
> enjoy!! xoxo

Porter wakes up choking on saltwater.

It pours from his mouth as he throws himself upright, gushing out of his throat and nose. He gags, gasps for air and coughs up yet more seawater. Everything feels vague and unreal and far away, like he’s dreaming or just waking from a dream. Everything except the taste of brine on his tongue and the blinding pain of salt lancing through his sinuses.

The last of it dribbles from his lips and he heaves for breath. It's utterly still and dark in his tiny room, empty and lifeless except for the movement of his sheets.

He coughs again, a dry and empty feeling in his lungs.

The clock is blinking 24:29 when he glances at it with blurry eyes. When he knuckles the sleep away and looks again it's 3:18 and Porter shakes his head, looks down into his lap.

The sheets are dry. There’s no water. 

There’s a shiver of fear, belated and fuzzing out already with the weight of exhaustion but Porter knuckles at his eye again and breathes out shakily. Just a dream. Just a nightmare, or a night terror, some feverish combination of stress and paranoia and this unfamiliar city. 

He turns over, pulls the sheets back up, stares at the glaring green numbers of his clock until they blur and sleep draws back in over him like a tide.

-O-

When he wakes up the next morning his blankets are still dry but he presses his nose to the pillows, just to be sure. The trailing scent of rot and salt is probably just his imagination.

-O-

The apartment isn’t ideal but it works.

It’d been advertised as two, but it’s only one room; Porter isn’t really surprised about it, considering the price. But it’s still depressing looking at the rent checks and then up again at the cracked plaster, the half-wall separating the kitchenette from the rest of the room. 

He knuckles at his eye for a moment and sighs. He has savings, had saved up in preparation for this and everything. But Los Angeles rent isn’t cheap and he needs things, he needs furniture and to pay for utilities and he’d known but… it’s different. It’s different to be living it. 

He’s got a little headache worming its way through his temple, something half too much coffee and half the way his dreams have been since he’d arrived here. They’re not nightmares, not really, but they’re so _real_. The kind of real that follows him for hours after he’s woken up, that lingers in the pound of his heartbeat and the shake in his fingers. Maybe it doesn’t help that he hasn’t left his apartment much except for food and to hand over the first month’s rent since he’d hauled his mattress up two flights of stairs and through his front door all on his own. 

He’s so alone here. 

He takes a deep breath, flips his pen carefully between his fingers and stares at the tooth marks in the soft plastic. Tries not to let the anxiety seep in, honey-thick and suffocating.

It’s worth it, he reminds himself. He has to _know_ this city if he wants to write about it properly. He has to know it down to the dirt and up to the sketchy traceries of the television aerials and satellite dishes, know it well enough to write a _masterpiece_. 

He’s gonna do it. He won’t let himself fail. 

There’s a convenience store he’s been passing on the way to the grocery store and the ‘help wanted’ sign hasn’t come down in almost a month. He can start there.

-O-

He picks up an application and fills it out in the shitty little café next door, hands it back in with a copy of his resume and carries on down the street to pick up some groceries.

He tries not to think about it too hard. 

He gets the call a day later, the manager telling him in a tone just a shade away from insultingly bored that he can come in tomorrow evening and they’ll let him run a shift just to see how it works out. Porter thanks him, voice high with relief. He hangs up after scribbling down the details and lays back on his mattress, stares up at the cracked ceiling. 

It’s not much, he decides, but it’s not the worst place to start. 

When he pulls out his laptop and opens his script there’s a city opening up around him, buildings and people he’s seen now, a culture he’s feeling out with blind, inquisitive fingertips. The words come easily, descriptive paragraphs and parenthetical action tags, dialogue and voice flowing out of him with an ease that leaves him winded, elated. 

He’s written almost half an hour’s worth of film when he finally closes the laptop lid. It’s late, a few ticks past midnight, but he doesn’t sleep for another hour. There’s a cheap Chinese food place across the street from his apartment and he watches the blink of the lights buzzing off and on. Hypnotizing.

-O-

The manager is waiting the next night, leaning back against the counter and chatting idly with the kid behind it. Porter doesn’t register them, nerves running over his skin like lightning. It’s difficult to swallow down but he tries, smiles as wide as he thinks he can get away with and tries to make his handshake firm. He’s got another copy of his resume on him just in case because he’s never been hired like this before but the man doesn’t ask for it, barely even remembers to give him the keycode for the back door and warn him it changes weekly.

He’s handed a key and run through a couple of policies, pointed at the security monitor and warned he’s being watched, evaluated for the job. And then he’s alone. 

The nerves don’t let up. 

It’s quiet in the store and he doesn’t feel ready, doesn’t feel like he knows what he should be doing. He doesn’t have anyone to text about it that isn’t family, not really. He’s alone. 

He swallows, the motion clicking in his throat. Drags his stool up to the corner by the security monitor and leans his shoulder against the plexiglass. 

He feels like someone’s… watching him. But when he peers out through what he can see of the dark windows there’s no one there, and the monitor tells him he’s all alone in the store. 

He glances up at the camera, pointed squarely at him. It’s probably just that.

-O-

The fluorescent lights flicker approximately once every minute and a half with a variation of about ten seconds more or less, just enough to keep Porter from being sure when it’s going to happen, and he tries to keep his head down.

He’s discovered that when he looks up the feeling gets stronger, the feeling of eyes on him. When he chances a glance out the windows there’s only people stumbling by, no one pausing to look. No one coming in either. There’s no one in the store, no one skulking through the aisles though he almost wishes there were. He’s alone, and he knows he’s alone, and yet… 

He swallows, eyes the security camera and slides his phone out of his pocket. He’s got a text from Nick, another from his mom. Checking in, asking how Los Angeles is, congratulating him on the job. He answers them with numb fingers, the fake tone of optimism and happiness flying across the screen so easily. There’s nothing actually _wrong_ , nothing but paranoia and maybe he’s gone too long without talking to someone. Really talking. 

His fingers are shaky tapping across the screen. He makes twice as many typos as usual, it takes so long to correct them all but he doesn’t want to answer any questions. 

He looks up again. 

He could swear something had shuffled across the end of the aisle right across from him but there’s nothing there, nothing when he forces himself to look at the security monitor. Just a trick of the light or exhaustion. 

He breathes in for a count of four, holds it until his lungs burn, lets it out slowly. There’s a flutter in the base of his lungs, something pushing the roar of heat in his cheeks higher. 

He tilts his head, unfocuses his eyes and tries to track the screen of the monitor from his peripherals. There’s something, a smudge of a shape right at the corner of the shelves that hold notebook paper and battered packages of pencils. Something small, maybe the size of a large dog. For just a moment in Porter’s fuzzy peripherals, hard to see through the distortion of the security camera, he thinks he sees it move. 

He takes a deep breath, leans over a little to look at the shelves with his heart beating at the base of his throat and blood roaring in his ears. 

There’s nothing there. 

When he looks back at the monitor there’s nothing but scuffed, shining linoleum and white shelves. Porter stares at it, tries to make out where the shadow could have been, where it could have _gone_ -

The door bursts open in a jingle and Porter nearly jumps out of his skin; there’s a storm of laughter, the sound of someone’s knees hitting linoleum and then up again a moment later. 

There’s someone hanging off the door, a girl with blue hair and eyebrows so sharp they look lethal. A tall man, loud, accent distinctly foreign heading for the beer. A guy so short Porter momentarily mistakes him for a child, half his head shaved and the other a mad dark tangle down his back is spinning in faux-pirouettes by the candy bars. Porter watches him for a long moment, blinks dully and tries to pull himself back into the present. 

Someone slaps down a can and Porter jumps again, stares up at the man grinning down at him. 

“He- _llo_ pretty cashier boy,” the man says and leans in, props his arm against the glass and rests his forehead against it. He’s grinning madly, manically. There’s something unreal about the way his eyes are focusing a little past Porter, dark and huge and glittering feverishly. “Where have _you_ been all my life.” 

Porter stares at him. He can’t make his voice work for a moment, can’t make his brain click into gear and guide him through this. 

“Stop harassing the pretty boys!” sings out the girl still hanging from the door. Porter jumps a little at her volume. 

“Shut the fuck _up_ ,” the man shouts back over his shoulder and Porter jumps again. “No one fucking asked!” 

They’re both so loud, voices cracking the air in a way that’s at least human, if jarring. 

He’s still smiling when he turns back around. 

“Don’t mind Mija,” he tells him and Porter nods mutely. The man slaps down his ID and Porter picks it up with a feeling like he’s in a dream. _Dillon Hart Francis_ , he reads and it takes him a moment to remember to flash it under the scanner. When it beeps at him he slides it back over to Dillon and pulls the beer over to him to flash under the scanner in turn. 

“Got a name, pretty boy?” Dillon's not looking at him anymore, he's sniffing conspicuously and shuffling around in his pockets and it's easier to really see him; the flush high in his cheeks, the way his hair had probably been artfully disheveled at some point in the night.

He glances up through his lashes and Porter jolts. 

“Porter,” he mumbles. Dillon grins, white teeth flashing against the lights. 

“Pretty Porter,” he says and it occurs to Porter to be maybe a little offended. A moment later Dillon’s sliding cash under the window to him and he’s distracted, counting the bills and poking at the till until it pops open and he can make change. 

Dillon’s watching him when he looks cautiously back up. His pupils are blown, dark enough Porter can see a little blotchy colorful swirl that’s himself in them. He’s smiling still, a mad thing that looks affected or maybe habitual. It’s not quite real. 

He’s still hot. Porter decides he isn’t offended. 

“Two thirty-seven’s your change,” he says and slides the cash under the window. Dillon’s smile widens, turns somehow more real. It’s kind of blindsiding and Porter ducks his head to hide the flush he can feel rising in his cheeks. 

“Let’s _go_ ,” the man with the odd accent shouts. Dillon twitches and Porter jumps, Dillon flashing a look behind him and then back at Porter. 

“I’ll see you around, _Porter_ ,” Dillon says and then he’s whirling away from the window, trotting over to the door and sweeping Mija up in one arm and shoving her towards the door. The man with the accent and the one with the hair are out a moment later and then Dillon’s turning in the doorway, cracking open his beer and waving in one motion before he’s gone too, the door swinging shut behind him. 

For half a moment Porter almost calls after him. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. Just _something_. The impulse dies in his throat and he breathes out instead. 

The store feels colder once they’re gone but somehow emptier than it had been, the paranoia draining away. He shivers and tucks his fingers into his pockets and when he glances at the security monitor it’s absolutely clear.

-O-

He’s got a brief text from the manager when he wakes up the next morning telling him he’s got the job if he still wants it, and that he just needs to come in sometime that afternoon to sign paperwork. Porter makes himself pancakes in celebration even though he’s not really so hungry, more tired than anything else.

He’ll go out tonight, he decides on a whim. He has to do it sometime, can’t possibly draw enough inspiration from the cracked off-white walls of his apartment.

-O-

The bar he chooses isn’t the best but that’s why he chose it. He needs to leave the apartment, needs more experience with this city. Needs the _details_ , the way to set himself and his writing apart. This is a good place to start, he tells himself as he shoulders his way carefully to the bar.

The thought is enough to hold off the simmer of nerves, the quiet whisper that says he’d be so much happier if he just turned around and left. Went back to his apartment, curled up around himself and took a nap. 

The bartender hands him the beer he points at, takes his ID for a quick glance and then walks off with his card. The counter is angular pressing into his hip and he welcomes it, grounds himself with it and takes a sip. It tastes like beer, it’s barely cold, but he sucks the flavor off his teeth and turns to look out into the room. 

It’s crowded but aside from the top 40s playlist piped in from some employee’s Pandora station there’s not much noise. No one’s dancing, not really. It’s early, Porter knows, but he isn’t sure if he wants to stay out late tonight, not if he’s alone and so tired. There’ve been more dreams. He doesn’t remember most of them, just remembers jerking awake and his window, the flicker of ancient halogen through it. 

The bartender comes back, asks him over the music if he wants to open a tab. He shakes his head after a moment and she hands the card back over, turns away brusquely when someone on the other side of the bar calls her over. Porter looks down, fumbles to slide his card back into his pocket. He’s feeling stupidly clumsy, out of place in his own skin and trying desperately not to show it. 

“Hey!” someone says right in his ear and then there’s a hand on his shoulder and he turns with a flare of confused anxiety before he’s spun all the way around and he recognizes the man grinning down at him. 

He looks a lot taller like this, both of them standing and no plexiglass between them. Porter blinks up at him and doesn’t understand for a very long moment. 

“Dillon,” he says without thinking and then flushes, wonders if he should have pretended not to know his name. Dillon doesn’t blink though, just grins wider and throws his hands out in an expansive, loose, drunk gesture. He’s swaying on his feet and for a moment Porter’s almost concerned before he steadies, leans in a little. 

“Porter, right?” he asks and laughs when Porter nods. “Let me buy you a drink!” 

Porter waves his beer weakly and Dillon snorts, leans across him to gesture at the bartender until she comes back over. She seems to know Dillon; laughs at something he says that Porter doesn’t catch. He clings to the cold glass under his fingers, the slippery catch of condensation. Dillon’s body is warm, almost up against his, if he just swayed a little bit they’d brush against each other and abruptly he _wants_ that. 

He swallows it down, curves into himself as much as he can, lifts his bottle clumsily to his lips and takes a bigger sip than he strictly means to. 

By the time he sets the bottle back the bartender’s returned with another beer. She hands it across to Dillon and waves him away when he says something else. They’re laughing to each other for a moment and Porter swallows against the nerves again. The rising anxiety of being in such close proximity to two people that know each other so much better than he knows anyone in the whole city. 

The bartender trots away a moment later and Dillon doesn’t step away like Porter had expected him to. He turns instead, leans his hip against the bar and looks down at Porter with a smile that looks more like a come-on than any of the times he’s called Porter _pretty_ so far. They’re so close Porter can still feel his body heat, has to tilt his head up to see Dillon’s face. 

“Some other time,” he concludes and it takes Porter a moment to connect his words to their previous conversation. 

He nods without really thinking about it. Dillon’s shirt has an ugly pattern of ducks on it and Porter focuses on that instead of the intensity of his stare. 

“Where are you from?” Dillon asks casually, taking a drink. It makes Porter frown because he’s barely said five words, barely given Dillon anything but his _first name_ and he doesn’t know how Dillon would know he’s not from the area. 

Dillon’s head tilts and his smile hooks a little into something that’s almost calculating. 

“You’re not from LA,” he says and it should be kindly but mostly just make Porter flush in embarrassment. “East coast, right? You’ve got a little accent.” 

“North Carolina,” Porter admits and can’t stop the little smile at the way Dillon crows, pumps a loose fist in victory. His enthusiasm is sweet, infectious. It’s nice and it quiets the anxiety so easily. 

“So what are you here to do?” Dillon asks, leaning back against the bar. He’s got his elbows up on it and the angle means he’s almost touching Porter’s back. It’s distracting for a moment and Porter takes a long drink to recenter himself. It’s almost tempting to sway into it, to press into Dillon’s side. 

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

“No one moves to LA from halfway across the fucking planet for _fun_ ,” Dillon says. For a moment he sounds… he sounds different and when Porter glances up at his face it’s a little strange, a little distant. Preoccupied. In an instant he’s grinning though, brilliant as ever, lifting his bottle to his lips. “Like, I’m an actor.” 

He snorts a moment later, swallows and makes a wry face.

“In the future tense.” 

Porter swallows, takes another drink and shrugs. He’s almost finished with the beer and it’s tempting to order something stronger. 

“I’m a writer,” he admits and his heart double-beats for some reason, cheeks going warm again. 

Dillon makes an excited noise. He’s swaying against the bar suddenly, a subtle side-to-side shift that brushes against Porter’s shoulder. 

“You _would_ be,” Dillon says. He sounds delighted. “Should have fucking known.” 

Porter shrugs but he can’t help the smile, ducks his head and finishes his beer in one swallow. 

“Gimme your number,” Dillon says, pulling out his phone and thumbing it on. The screen is a mess of splintered cracks but Dillon taps open his contacts with ease. “I’ll finally get you that drink, make up for how we met.” 

Porter hesitates and then rattles off his number, breathless with disbelief and daring. Dillon grins when he’s done, slides the phone back into his pocket and sways again. His head is tilting loosely and the way he’s looking at Porter is bright with amusement, alcohol, and interest. 

“I’ll text you,” he says, “We can hang out!” 

Porter smiles helplessly, bobs a nod. And then Dillon’s off, a flash of movement and then his ugly shirt, shining once under the lights and gone, utterly.

-O-

Porter wakes up to texts, from his family and some friends back home, from his boss asking him to take a shift, and one from an unknown number.

 _Hello porter!!_ it reads and Porter swallows back a smile. He’s got a little headache but it’s the same one he’s had for days, probably much more his shitty sleeping habits lately than the three beers he’d had before going home. He hadn’t thought Dillon would text him at all, not really. Two coincidental meetings do not a friendship make. 

_at least I’m not pretty boy this time_ , he texts back and hauls himself to his feet to make breakfast. He’s going to take the shift his boss wants him to cover but he’s got an hour or so yet, time to eat and maybe hammer out a few hundred words. He’s feeling kind of good about it, like maybe something’s falling into place. 

Dillon hasn’t texted back by the time he’s finished eating and pecked out a few notes at the end of his script and saved it all, thrown on his work clothes and headed for the door. For a moment he’s disappointed but then he remembers Dillon’s eyes in the bar, their alcohol-lit brilliance, and concludes he’s going to be lucky if Dillon texts back at all today. 

He gets to work, sets himself up in the booth, throws his phone to the corner of the counter. The day shift is so much busier than the night shift and he’s a little overwhelmed for a while, flashing IDs under the scanner, counting change and glancing at the security monitor every few minutes. 

The rush lulls at one, the lunch crowd back at their desks and the school crowd not yet arrived. Porter sits back on his stool and sighs, knuckles at his aching eyes again and considers comping himself a coffee. Being awake is hard but sleeping is even harder, and anyway the taste of caffeine has always meant comfort to him. 

His phone chimes and he picks it up absently, glancing at the screen and grinning. 

_Nah still pretty,_ Dillon’s texted back. 

_alright then,_ Porter replies and sets his phone back down as the door jingles open. The phone chimes again but he ignores it, rings up a cup of coffee and some Chex Mix, smiles until the customer is out the door. 

_U love me,_ Porter reads and he can’t help his smile. It’s the stupidest thing but he feels lighter than he has all week, a subtle weight gone from his chest. 

_we’re moving a little fast,_ he texts back and laughs when his phone chimes at him almost immediately. Somewhere across the city Dillon’s got his phone in hand too, waiting for Porter to text back. It’s a nice feeling. 

_Come out w me tonight!!!_ Dillon’s replied, and Porter’s phone buzzes at him again a moment later. _We can get to know each other ;) ;) ;)_

Porter bites his lip, glances up at the clock and considers. He’d wanted to write a little, maybe, but when he considers he realizes he’d had no idea what he’d write. And there’s nothing else he could be doing. 

_yeah sure where do you want to meet up,_ he replies and tosses his phone back onto the counter as another customer trips through the door.

-O-

Dillon’s standing on the street corner he’d told Porter to meet him at when Porter walks up. He’s lit up by his phone, by the shine of the windows behind him. It takes Porter a moment to swallow down the surge of nerves, to walk up to him.

When he sees Porter he smiles though, tucks his phone away and grins so broadly it seems unreal. He’s an actor, Porter thinks dizzily. It’s an odd thought and in its aftermath Dillon already has an arm around his shoulders, is steering him down the street. Suddenly they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip and the warmth and contact is shocking. 

“Thought you were never gonna show,” Dillon’s saying and he’s still grinning but he’s not looking at Porter anymore when he chances a look. His teeth shine, his face patterned in the shift of the neon and halogen signs and his eyes are on the signs instead, reflecting them in jeweled flashes. 

Porter swallows the sudden impulse to take off running. He wants to stay; that’s kind of the problem. 

The club Dillon takes him to is small, dirty and down a flight of stairs and lit with neon that he thinks at one point was supposed to pulse in time but now buzzes in and out in a staccato almost-rhythm that makes him feel drunk already. It smells of spilled beer and sweat and _humanity_ and Porter can feel it pressing into his skin, making an impression in him. Dillon waggles his eyebrows when he sees Porter’s wide eyes, looks pleased. 

“It’s a fucking dive,” is what he says and Porter doesn’t know him very well yet but what he thinks Dillon’s actually saying is _I love this place_. 

He grins back, hopes it isn’t too weak. He’s a little out of his depth. Excited or maybe nervous, some combination that’s making his stomach flutter, and when Dillon smiles back at him it flips again, harder. Dillon looks like something preternatural, limned in neon, arms spread like a preacher to encompass the whole club. He looks like he’s about to impart some holy wisdom. 

“I got the first round,” he says instead and Porter breathes in. “What’s your preference?” 

Porter swallows down the desire to laugh nervously. Shrugs. 

“Show me what’s best here,” he says, something safe that isn’t admitting he mostly drinks shitty bathtub vodka and Pabst. Dillon bobs a nod and winks and then his hands are on Porter, turning him and nudging him towards an open booth. The club isn’t very crowded but it’s probably early to the people that come here. There are some kids pogoing in what seems to be the dance floor, knocking into each other and meshing in clumsy joy, laughing and laughing and laughing. 

Their mouths are open so wide, so dark. Their eyes are dark too, holes in their faces that gape and Porter can’t look away from them for a long minute. They’re fey, all skinny tangles of limbs and fluttering ribbons, beautifully monstrous for the moment before Porter blinks and they’re just human again. 

He swallows, forces his feet to move. 

Dillon’s gone for what has to be less than a minute, throwing himself into the bench across from Porter and handing across a bottle with a label he vaguely recognizes, sliding over a shot glass of something clear a moment later. Porter clutches the bottle, glances at the shot and then back up at Dillon questioningly. 

Dillon smiles. His teeth glint. 

“A Los Angeles welcome,” he says, voice almost hidden in the music. “Drink up.” 

Porter takes the shot and gasps at the sickly burn. He thinks probably tequila. 

Dillon keeps smiling. 

“So you’re a writer,” he begins conversationally and for a moment Porter wants to laugh at how strange this is, this neon-soaked moment and this man across from him asking about his script. He stares for a moment and Dillon is the one that laughs, head back and mouth wide in honest amusement. 

He takes his own shot without wincing and chases it with a pull from his beer. 

“You’re gonna be pitching that script for a long time, kiddo, to people a lot less interested than me,” he says and then snickers at the face Porter makes at the endearment. “Consider it practice or something, I wanna hear about it.” 

Porter hesitates a moment longer and then shrugs, takes a pull from his own beer and leans forward. The tequila is settling hot and singing in his gut, harmonizing with the neon and the hum of his nerves until his body feels diaphanous, like he’s flying. 

“It’s this neo-noir fucking… you know, set in near-future LA,” he begins, “It’s a murder mystery, but the main character has this secret...”

-O-

He’s finished his first beer, his second and third shot. Dillon had kept them coming, waved Porter away when he’d protested.

“You can get the next round,” he keeps saying. Porter hasn’t missed how many times he’s said that. 

He’s gone now though. Bathroom, probably, Porter’s dizzy and memories are hard to dredge up. 

He clings to his beer, takes another sip. It’s good, whatever it is. Maybe he’s just drunk. 

Dillon’s gone a long time and without him the club starts to seem hollow, dark and too close. Porter stares down at his hands wrapped around his beer and tries not to check the corners of his eyes, tries not to imagine the figures he can see in his peripherals are stretching, twisting, turning towards him to stare with eyes he can’t see but can feel like fire. 

When he gives up and looks they’re just dancers, just frenetic figures jerking in something close to time with the music. He doesn’t recognize them, feels no kinship, but they’re harmless. 

He’s too drunk and getting worse, the world spinning around him sickeningly. Everything’s hitting him at once, he thinks, and brings the beer to his lips anyway. It’s something to hold onto and he’s so far in anyway he’s pretty sure he couldn’t stop if he tried. 

Vaguely he toys with the idea of following Dillon into the bathroom, just… just to find him. There’s a little shiver of paranoia that tells him Dillon’s left without him and it’s hard to shake like this, with everything blurring and the soft hum of alcohol burning through his veins. It’s a seductive fear and it settles into the churn of Porter’s stomach so easily. 

He’s sliding down the bench to get out of the booth, maybe to make a break for it or maybe to look for Dillon when the bathroom door opens in a wash of dim fluorescent light. 

It shifts the gravity of the shitty little club and Porter clutches the table to ride it out and then the door’s closing and Porter blinks through his nausea to see Dillon. 

He’s walking to the bar, talking to someone short and bearded and sturdy. The man’s gesturing in sharp expansive motions that look angry though everything about Dillon’s posture says that it’s nothing more than a joke. He’s talking back, talking _over_ the man and Porter can make out the volume of his voice even over the music, even if he can’t make out the words. He watches the man’s face wind tighter and tighter until they reach the bar and Dillon turns to gesture at the bartender. 

Eventually the bearded man shrugs, turns away. Porter realizes he’d been staring and jerks away to stare at the shredded label of his beer. 

The man’s hands had been clenched into white-knuckle fists, he thinks hazily. 

A moment later Dillon’s sliding into the booth across from him and sliding a shot across to him and Porter blinks up at him, thoughts scattering. It’s so hard to focus on anything. Everything is so much, the shine of Dillon’s grin, the way his earrings glint in the light, the way he seems for just a moment to glitter. 

Dillon leans forward and this close it’s easy to see his pupils are so blown they look like they’re eating into the whites. Dark, deep and blank, and Porter thinks dizzily he could fall into them if he tried. He sways in place and Dillon’s head tilts lazily, hand coming up to catch Porter’s where it’s laying on the tabletop and moving it to the shot glass. 

“There you go,” he says, voice tripping out a little wrong, a little too loud. “Didn’t mean to be gone so long, I had some shit to take care of, you know how it is.” 

He sniffs, wipes at his nose.

Porter glances back across the club and the man with the beard is looking back, eyes sliding right past him to Dillon. There’s something about his expression that’s a little resigned, a little tired, and Porter looks back at Dillon in time to catch him following Porter’s gaze. 

“Mmm, Anton,” Dillon hums, sighs out a little laugh. The sound is too airy. He’s still watching Anton watch them. “I can introduce you, we’re all kinds of close. Best friends.” 

Anton turns away. Dillon looks back at Porter and he thinks there’s something a little glassy and false in his smile. Or more false than before. 

“I’m good,” Porter says and slams the shot in his hand, shoves himself out of the booth. Dillon’s doing the same and following him a moment later, watching him with that depthless, glassy smile that makes Porter’s stomach twist. He can’t tell if it’s excitement or something else. 

He tips forward and Dillon’s arm comes around him with a sense of inevitability. 

“Dance with me,” Porter blurts. 

“Baby,” Dillon purrs cartoonishly against his ear, “thought you’d never ask,” and then he’s be tugged out onto the dancefloor. 

He’s drunk, he’s flying on neon and a bass beat just a touch faster than his heart seems to want to go. Dillon’s too hot pressing against his back, hands on his hips, the contact not grounding so much as sinking through Porter’s skin. He wants more, presses back into it greedily until Dillon’s mouth finds the crook of his neck and bites down, a hand coming around his waist and holding him still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the time 24:29 is a reference to Matthews 24:29!


	2. moon rocks - enrico sangiuliano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to [molly](http://7daysofwitchery.tumblr.com) for beta and tireless support! this one is dedicated to [kao](http://swag-machine.tumblr.com) for the AMAZING art and being such a lovely friend??? and also dedicated to [fanny](http://takealoadofffanny.tumblr.com) as a slightly belated happy birthday!! go follow all of them!
> 
> enjoy xoxo

Drunk nightmares feel like fever dreams, Porter thinks hazily when he finally swims close enough to consciousness to recognize them. Hyperreal, lurid and slow, too blurred with reality to shake away so easily but impossible to fully remember.

He opens his eyes and immediately slams them closed again against the cold light from the window across from him.

Eventually when the pain in his head has died down he turns over, fighting through what’s possibly the worst hangover he’s ever had to keep himself from puking. At least when he slits his eyes open the light isn’t so bad.

He’s alone, in a cramped bedroom he doesn’t recognize.

There are posters on the wall for bands he doesn’t know that look handmade, crumpled and pinned in place with mismatched pins. Drifts of laundry on the floor. When he turns his head to look at them his stomach surges with nausea. His head feels full and hot, everything aching in a way that makes everything feel so distant.

He remembers the club, dimly. Remembers Dillon’s hands on him with a distant pulse of something that might be embarrassment and might be arousal. He remembers Dillon greeting people he must have known, might have introduced Porter to. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember it except in impressions, more dizzy neon, the back of a cab. Dillon’s arm around his waist, anchoring him.

He lifts the blanket and discovers he’s wearing his jeans, but not his shirt. They’re torn at both knees, a little bloodied, and he recognizes the throbbing pain belatedly.

He’s clean though. No vomit. No come.

He can hear someone cooking in the next room, he realizes, and gingerly sits up.

The pain in his head flares and his stomach rolls but he doesn’t throw up even when he starts inching his way out of the bed. There’s nothing familiar about the room, nothing he recognizes. He doesn’t see his shirt, and when he drops his feet over the edge of the bed he realizes he’s not wearing his shoes or socks either.

He gets up anyway, steadies himself with a hand against the wall and hobbles to the door.

The hallway outside is cracked plaster lined with more posters, for movies this time and Porter recognizes most of these. There are doors too, all closed. He shuffles into the hallway and shivers, wishes he knew where his shirt went.

He follows the smell of cooking meat and turns the corner and when he finds it's Dillon standing at the stove the dizzy surge of relief is almost enough to make him go to his knees.

Dillon looks up at him and then smiles, broad and pleased.

“Hey, sleepy,” he says and waves the spatula he’s holding.

He looks rumpled and greasy and exhausted. There are dark circles under his red rimmed eyes and his grip on the spatula seems to shake a little bit before he’s tossing it onto the counter and turning off the burner. He doesn’t look like he’d slept but he’s still grinning, deep and genuine and Porter can’t make himself look at it directly.

When Porter glances at the clock it’s almost nine in the morning.

“Coffee?” he asks hoarsely and Dillon points at the coffeemaker puttering away in the corner. Porter nods, shuffles past him hesitantly and reaches for the mugs.

“Do one for me? Sugar’s in the pantry, milk’s in the fridge.” Dillon asks idly. He’s reaching into the cupboard to grab plates when Porter glances over, his shirt riding up and a sliver of his stomach showing. Porter tears his eyes away, swallows back the nauseous arousal, grabs a second mug.

The sugar is right at eye-level. The milk is in the door of the fridge. It’s all so easy, Dillon humming and dishing two plates of eggs and sausage and hashbrowns. It’s too easy and Porter has to close his eyes against a dizzy spiral of homesickness and longing and more nausea. He thinks Dillon had kissed him last night. He doesn’t know what else they’d done.

“You couldn’t remember your address in the cab so I took you back to my place,” Dillon says conversationally. He’s rattling around in the silverware drawer and the sound is going straight to Porter’s aching skull. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” Porter says belatedly. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

He sets Dillon’s mug by the stove and slides hesitantly onto one of the mismatched stools by the counter. He can see through the tiny kitchen window like this, out into the street below. He doesn’t recognize the part of town but it looks nicer than his. There’s a picture on the wall, a childish crayon collage with three illegible signatures. Dillon smiles at him and it’s simple, carefree even with how tired he looks.

Porter thinks that maybe losing his virginity to him wouldn’t have been the worst thing.

“Last night, did we…?” he asks haltingly and Dillon snorts, hands him a plate and slides his mug over next to Porter. Everything smells amazing.

“The fuck you take me for,” Dillon says and sits on the stool next to Porter, picks up his fork, pokes at his eggs with vague disinterest. “You were so fucking wasted.”

“Oh,” Porter says, relieved, shoveling a bite of hashbrowns into his mouth and washing it down with scalding coffee. He feels so much better, everything in him loosening up. Suddenly he’s starving.

Dillon’s still smiling crookedly when he glances up but his eyes are suddenly cool, a little distant.

“We made out a little in the club and that’s it,” he says. It’s quiet and it takes Porter a moment to understand and then he’s laughing, shaking his head.

“Thanks, I just… wanted to know. Y’know?”

Dillon’s not smiling anymore when Porter glances over but his face is friendly again. He nods, reaches over and nudges Porter with an elbow.

-O-

Dillon insists on walking him to the bus stop when Porter says that’s what he’s taking home. He walks ahead of him down the stairs, takes them two at a time and bounces impatiently on his toes as Porter hurries to keep up. There's a little yard outside Dillon's building, a square of yellowed grass and tall bushes and Porter pauses, staring at the dark leaves slowly dying in the summer heat.

There'd been someone standing in them, last night.

It's a flashing memory, so quick and vivid that as soon as it comes he's not sure if he's imagining it or not. A blink of dark yard and drunkenness so giddy it edges into sickness. Dillon's arm around him, hand splaying on the small of his back, Porter turning in the doorway to look out as Dillon had fumbled with his keys.

There'd been a figure in the bushes. Watching them. Porter had almost said something, almost called out to whoever they were, but then Dillon's hand had caught his wrist and he'd been steered inside and the figure had been out of his mind in an instant.

There's no one there now. Porter shivers and then Dillon's making an impatient noise, gesturing him to the sidewalk.

“You'll miss your bus,” Dillon chides and then they're walking and it's like before, the figure dropping from his thoughts so easily. The sun is bright and yellow and warm and when Dillon smiles at him Porter smiles back helplessly, his heart beating too fast. He still feels a little sick.

“Text me, we should go out again,” Dillon says when they’ve reached the stop. “We can talk industry shit.”

He’s grinning when Porter glances at him warily but it’s not mocking, just amused.

“I will,” Porter says and maybe he even means it.

And then Dillon’s gone again and Porter’s still sick. Still nauseous deep in his gut, roiling and anxious. He’s alone again and he’d managed to forget somehow how it’d felt. Exposed.

He takes the bus home and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He’s anxious at the idea of what he’ll see in them. If he’ll see anything at all.

He doesn’t like where that thought comes from, refuses to follow it deeper into the trembling anxiety of his fading hangover. It threatens to overtake him in shaking fingers and shuddering breathing and racing heartbeat.

He goes to the row of seats in the back and tucks himself into the corner, huddled up to the window. There’s nothing to see but he takes turns watching the scenery and watching his fellow passengers anyway, suspicious of both. He’s not sure what he’s watching for.

-O-

His room seems so much emptier when he gets back. Colder and unfriendly. He puts on a hoodie even though it’s something like seventy degrees out and it feels a little bit better. He lays down on top of his covers, rolls to face the window and stares up into the cloudless, hazy sky.

-O-

His laptop is playing something he lost track of hours ago and he’s two beers past tipsy and he can’t look away from the in-out buzz of the cheap flashing sign outside his window.

It’s hypnotizing, like the sway of a cobra, like something dangerous and it’s just a _Chinese takeout sign_ but he’s taking slow breaths anyway. Controlled, almost viciously so. He blinks slowly and shakes himself. 

He’s too alone, he knows that. He lifts the beer to his lips again. 

He doesn’t _feel_ alone, is the problem. The watched feeling has followed him home and the inside of his cheek is hot and swollen with how hard he’s been biting it in an attempt to calm down. It hasn’t been working. His apartment is too dark, the corners too easy to hide in. Agoraphobia eclipsing claustrophobia - for once the room feels too big. 

He turns deliberately away from the window, back to the bright flare of his laptop screen. It’s hard to focus on and he doesn’t understand the figures moving across it, can’t make the subtitles he’d turned on a while ago resolve into anything but gibberish. 

Moving seems dangerous, like it’ll attract attention, but he reaches out anyway and pokes at the spacebar until the screen freezes, the sound cutting out in the middle of a laugh track. It’s jarring, the sudden silence. It feels even less safe. 

He turns his head to check the kitchen, the corners of the ceiling. Nothing, like before, like there always has been. 

He swallows and his throat clicks and he fumbles in the sheets for his phone. It’s mostly dead and he doesn’t have any texts and he stares at the screen for a long moment. 

The weight of how very alone he is for a moment is absolutely crushing. 

Biting down on the inside of his cheek again hurts and suddenly his mouth tastes like blood, sharp and coppery, and he breathes out in a shocked rush. With it comes something, some sense of desperation. It’s hard to feel through the heaviness of fear and alcohol but his fingers are tapping open his texts, hovering over Dillon’s name. The last text is from yesterday, a stupid text chain message Dillon had sent him and Porter hadn’t responded to. He doesn’t know what to say to anyone. 

Texting is hard. Talking is harder. 

He taps Dillon’s name. 

_what’s up,_ he sends and leans over to plug in his phone. 

It’s buzzing a moment later and he reaches for it without thinking, freezes when he realizes it’s an incoming call. 

His hand is shaking a little when he accepts it and the rush of noise when he puts it to his ear is almost enough to have him hang up the call again. 

He can make out Dillon’s voice, the throb of bass crackly through the phone speakers. Someone else, yelling. 

“Hey,” Porter says and Dillon’s making a wordless noise in his ear, something that could have been laughter. It’s so hard to tell. 

“Porter!” he makes out. “Porter, dude!” 

“Hey,” he repeats and there’s a smile sneaking across his mouth somehow. He doesn’t stop it. 

“Dude-,” Dillon’s saying and then there’s a sharp crash through the phone speakers and he hears distant swearing. A moment later there’s another crash, a sharp click, and Dillon’s back in his ear and he’s laughing. It’s warm and human and Porter knuckles at his mouth. “Sorry, dropped my phone, holy _shit_.” 

“What’s up?” Porter asks. He’s not sure how Dillon can hear him, he can barely make out Dillon through the crackle of the volume of the music. 

“Shit-,” Dillon says and then his phone is cutting out, voice fading back in a second later, “-should come! It’s fucking crazy, music sucks so bad.” 

Porter breathes in. His lungs feel like they’re opening, he can draw in air again. 

He reaches for his beer, drains the last of it. 

“Text me the address,” he says and Dillon laughs.

-O-

He doesn’t know these people, not really. They’re Dillon’s friends. But it’s alright because everyone’s smiling and every time he finishes his drink someone shoves a new one into his hand.

He’d met them, apparently, or they’d known him at least. He thinks he’s figured out their names but it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing matters, not with the music so loud and the sweet burn of alcohol on his tongue. 

They’re all squished together in the booth, close and warm and sweat-damp and laughing. Everything’s so loud, impossible to focus on, flowing through him in waves of light and motion and words that catch briefly and then are gone again. Dillon’s pressed against his shoulder, one leg almost under him so he’s half in Dillon’s lap.

He feels good. He feels so good, loose and free and fluid in his own skin. At home. Dillon’s hand is on his hip, fingers hot pressing against his skin.

“You’re fucking _lying_ ,” the tall foreign man shouts. Porter thinks his name is Adam and his voice is soaring over the music for a moment. Porter turns his head to look at him, head hanging slack on his neck. He’s a blurry shape, gesticulating wildly, his voice slipping back under the tide of the music.

He hums, turns back to look down at the beer in front of him. There’s a third left and alcohol is burning through him and making everything lighter and so infinitely more interesting. Dillon hums back against Porter’s ear, mouth against his skin. When he tilts his head Dillon’s lips slide down the line of his neck and he sighs at how good it feels.

Dillon’s leaning away a moment later and then his mouth is gone. Porter sighs again in loss, turns his head to urge Dillon back.

Except he’s kissing Mija.

It’s beautiful, Porter thinks in the stunned moment it takes to understand. They’re beautiful, Mija’s hair a stunning flare against the lights, Dillon’s neck a curve of delicate skin and muscle. They’re like some piece of modern art and it hurts to see, somewhere deep in Porter’s chest. Her nails are in Dillon’s hair and Porter can see their mouths work, the hot flash of tongue and then Dillon’s fingers are tightening around his hip and Porter hauls in a breath that feels sick in his lungs.

He’s too drunk. He wants to throw up, wants to take off running.

He hauls in a breath, and then another. Reaches for his beer.

It makes the nausea worse when it hits his stomach but the cold helps a little, shocks away some of the numbness and he blinks against it.

The other guy - Sonny, Porter thinks, the one with the hair - is watching him from the other side of the booth. Porter smiles at him and he smiles back and his eyes are huge, deep and dark and inhuman.

Dillon shifts under him again and he’s back, breathing in Porter’s ear and Porter wants to scream. He wants to grab Dillon’s face and kiss him until Mija is gone from his mouth, until all Dillon can taste is Porter. Kiss him with teeth until Dillon kisses back and this sick, empty jealousy doesn’t matter anymore.

He swallows.

“Is this fucking Soft Cell?” he asks because there needs to be something to say and he can’t think about the kiss and the music is finally filtering through the haze of vodka and whiskey. It is, the familiar strains of Tainted Love threading through the beat.

Dillon laughs and he’s breathless.

Porter goes when Dillon tugs him to his feet, stumbling past Mija and Sonny, waving behind him. They’re saying something but Porter’s already too far to hear, weaving through the people on the dancefloor after Dillon until they’ve fetched up against the speakers.

Dillon looks at him, just at Porter. He’s grinning.

It’s the worst smile he has, it’s like sunlight shining through him and Porter smiles back helplessly, the beat running through him until he has to sway even though it’s fucking _Soft Cell_ , the singer’s voice stuttering through whatever shitty filter the DJ is throwing on top of it, _“-Now I know I've got to- got to- got t-t-to run away, I've got to-”_

“I hate this,” he shouts at Dillon and he doesn’t even think Dillon hears him, he’s still smiling and swaying to the beat.

-O-

In the cab he’s in Dillon’s lap again, the cabbie glaring at him in the rearview mirror and Mija’s nails digging into his arm. It’s too much but Dillon’s hands are on him, holding him steady. He’s not touching Mija. It’s almost good.

-O-

Work is easier and harder.

The paranoia is a constant companion but in a way that grinds instead of speeds his heartbeat. He blinks his way through it, counts his breathing and shakes away the nagging need to check the monitor, to track every movement in his peripherals. It’s never anything.

It’s nothing. Always nothing.

He’s bored more than anything. He keeps his phone on the counter now, stupid games and texting Dillon and Sonny, flicking through Adam’s ridiculous Snapchat stories, anything to chase down the hours.

He isn’t writing anything. He has the document on his phone, his untitled _genius project_. He doesn’t open it except when he’s covering the graveyard shift for his coworker and it’s past midnight and the lack of words is pressing in on him, that this is his life, that this is what he’d _came here to do_. The writing is still everything but the stagnation is starting to burn.

He swallows it down. Checks the monitor and rocks back and forth on his stool a little bit. Reaches desperately for his phone when it chimes the text message tone.

-O-

There are black trashbags spilling across the hallway. Porter steps around them carefully and holds his breath. There's food in the gross pile, he can smell it, going rotten and soft in the summer heat. He can almost taste sour milk and spoiled cream sauce.

He keeps walking and doesn't look too closely at the shining black mass. It’s not his business, not his problem, just a reminder he needs a new place in a better neighborhood.

He’s fine, just a little tired. He hadn’t slept so well the night before.

-O-

_Come out w me!!_

 _yeah okay_.

-O-

The party is far enough from Porter’s apartment to make him nervous but Dillon tells him not to worry when Porter brings it up. He’s drunk already, had been when Porter had showed up at his apartment, swaying in his kitchen like there was music playing instead of the distant sound of Tanner whooping at something he’s playing in his room.

Sonny and Mija were supposed to come with them, Dillon tells him, and then motions like he’s jerking off and shrugs. 

“They’re like that sometimes,” he says easily and Porter blinks at him and bites the inside of his cheek and doesn’t say anything. He wants to. He wants to ask if Dillon’s jealous. If he cares at all. What it means, what any of it means. 

Dillon doesn’t continue. Doesn’t stop smiling, slips his arms around Porter’s waist and sways with him for a moment before spinning away again to snatch a can of beer from the fridge and hand it to him. His touch leaves phantoms on Porter’s skin and he rests his burning cheek against the can, prays Dillon won’t notice the flush. 

He doesn’t - he herds Porter into a cab as soon as he’s finished his beer and throws an arm over the back of the seat, pulls out his phone and reads off an address that’s out of Porter’s head as soon as he hears it. He’s distracted by Dillon’s hand, an inch from the back of his neck, how easy it would be to slide down into Dillon’s side. It’s a stupid thing to want, he tells himself, but when he chances looking Dillon’s watching him and smiling. 

“Buckle up,” the cab driver says and Porter jumps, flushes, reaches down to do up his seat belt.

-O-

He doesn’t realize Dillon’s gone for a while.

It’s been hours and he’s the kind of drunk that’s too much like that first club, too much like losing his grip on reality. At some point he had been talking to people. Someone had slapped his back, a girl had leaned against his shoulder and he had blushed and someone had laughed. He can’t remember what he’d said, what they’d said. 

He remembers turning around and Dillon being gone. 

The anxiety is instant and stone in his gut. 

For a moment his hands are moving uselessly before they settle on his phone, edging it out of his pocket and thumbing the screen on clumsily. He thinks Dillon would warn him if he left but he has nothing but a text from Nick and anyway he can’t quite make his fingers work the keyboard. 

It’s easier just to sway to the music, to let it flow through him and try to pull himself back together. It’s hard, it feels like he’s moving in slow motion and everything else is too fast. None of it makes sense and he blinks, opens his eyes again to find the people in the room have moved. They’ve _changed_ , The fear swims through him like something vast and awful, swelling in his throat and gut until he can’t breathe.

He turns and stumbles away. There’s a door open in the hall spilling fluorescent light in a cold tide and he turns into it, scrabbles for the door and locks it behind him.

It’s a bathroom, cold and empty and bright. He leans back against the door and feels the empty echo of anxiety climbing his ribs like ivy. He wants to go home, suddenly. He wants to curl up in his blankets and shake his way through this.

He hauls in a breath that hurts and steps away from the door, weaves over to the mirror and peers at himself. Beaky nose. Hollow eyes. The flush high in his cheeks, alcohol burning through him. Long hair curling behind his ears, and he looks down instead of meeting his eyes, turns on the faucet and runs his fingers through the water.

It’s cold and he hisses, turns off the water and sits heavily on the closed toilet. Presses his fingers against his eyes and tries to calm down. He can hear the music through the door and people stumbling down the hall, laughter and footsteps and shouting, slurred and impossible to make out. He tracks them dizzily, tries to recognize someone. He wants to go home.

Someone knocks on the door and he jumps.

“Is someone in here?” comes a girl’s voice, and then the doorknob is rattling and Porter stumbles to his feet, lists against the wall for a moment and then hauls himself up.

“Yeah, gimme a second!” he calls back and the girl huffs, a soft thump that might be her falling against the wall near the door.

The girl stares at him when he steps out and he stares back for a moment, drunk and stretching to infinity before she’s laughing, ducking off the wall and spinning into the bathroom in a dizzy drunken wobble. The door shuts behind her and Porter takes in a breath that feels like the only one he’s had all night.

He looks down at his hands and they’re shaking a little bit.

There’s more beer in the kitchen, he decides dimly. He’ll work out the rest from there.

He makes it to the kitchen, ducking between waving arms and the words people are throwing after him that he can’t quite make out, doesn’t try to. Everyone’s too crowded, talking too loudly. He keeps moving so they can’t catch him, so he can’t think. It’s easier, everything blurring as he goes. Easier to let it all run together.

The can he grabs is cold under his fingers, slippery with condensation, and he looks at it only long enough to know it’s beer and not soda.

No one stops him walking away with it. He smiles vaguely, lists into the wall by the door to the living room. There’s music playing but all he’s registering is the bass. He picks at the tab, tries to get his nails under it to pry it open. His nails are so short - he’s been biting them so much lately. Nerves, boredom. He pushes the thought away and finally pries up the tab and cracks it open.

It fizzes over his hand, runs down his wrist and drips to the floor and he laughs. It comes out choked and quiet.

It tastes like shit when he lifts it to his lips but he’s thirsty. He drinks half of it in one long series of swallows, each following from the first so naturally it’s more the unpleasant fullness of beer fizzing in his stomach than the need for air that makes him stop.

The room is spinning even faster. He swallows down another choked laugh and shoves himself unsteadily off the wall.

A hand catches him by the shoulder and he tenses but turns, hope rising nauseous in his throat that it's Dillon. That he can leave because this is too loud and too much and he doesn't know anyone and he's too drunk to know how to get home.

It's the bearded man Dillon had known.

Porter stares at him for a long moment, searching for a name, and can only think of the way Dillon had smiled in that club that night. The pulse of neon. The way Dillon’s mouth had looked around the words _LA welcome_. The taste of beer is heavy and bitter in his mouth and he swallows it down.

Anton.

“Hello,” Anton says and his voice is nothing like Porter had expected, soft and accented and kind. He's smiling, broad and uncomplicated and alarmingly sweet.

“Hi,” Porter breathes and sways in place. He wants to leave. He doesn't want to talk to Anton. He doesn't want to be here or anywhere.

The smile slides from Anton's face and Porter doesn't like the concerned expression that replaces it any more.

“Are you okay?” Anton asks and Porter lifts his can of whatever beer it is to his mouth to avoid answering. He doesn't know. He can't feel anything and everything is spinning.

“I'm fine,” he slurs out when he's finished his sip and Anton is still there, is still looking at him. He goes to turn but stumbles because gravity isn't working like it should and then warm hands are on him, hoisting him up to lean against Anton's shoulder.

“There we go,” Anton murmurs in his ear. “You're Dillon's Porter, right? Did he bring you here? Do you know where he is?”

“I'm not,” Porter says and then stops, confused and vaguely annoyed because he doesn't _belong_ to Dillon. He's alone, since Dillon's gone. He doesn't belong to anyone.

“Listen,” Anton begins.

“Why does Dillon hate you?” Porter interrupts.

There's silence between them for a moment, outlined in pounding bass and screaming laughter and someone far away in the echoing depths of the house yelling angrily.

“C'mon,” Anton says and lifts Porter carefully to his feet and then lets go of his shoulders to wrap a loose hand around his wrist. He's strong, Porter realizes in a scatter of heat that dissipates as soon as it comes. He follows, docile. He thinks he likes Anton.

“Dillon doesn't hate me,” Anton says as they pass through the living room. It's hard to hear him over the music, the people. His words make it through anyway.

“You,” Porter begins and then Anton's tugging him into the entryway.

“I don't hate him either,” Anton tells him without turning, and his voice is tired and sad.

Porter's opening his mouth to say something though he's not sure what. Something about Dillon's false smile in that very first club, something about how there had been the weight of things Porter doesn’t understand behind it. That there were a lot of things that could hurt like that and hate was the least of them.

“Anton,” Dillon says and Porter blinks to refocus and somehow they’d made it through the door onto the porch. It’s warm out, he realizes. Warm like late summer, warm like early evening. The porch is bright with the flare of cigarettes, hazy with smoke. The spinning is less, out here. The fresh air is good. 

Dillon is standing at the bottom step. He's rumpled, holding a cigarette in one languid hand. There are people behind him, watching.

His eyes are huge and dark and the smile stretched tight over his face is fake and twisted. For a moment he doesn't look quite human.

“Hey, Dillon,” Anton says. He sounds resigned.

“Porter,” Dillon says and whatever Porter had seen in his face falls away when he turns it on Porter. It becomes a plaintive smile, fey and longing under dark eyes, and for a moment he thinks he sees fear flashing in their depths. “Heading home?”’

Anton's hand tightens around Porter's wrist and for a moment he's dizzy, torn, panic beating in the base of his throat.

And then Anton's turning to him and the moment is past.

“I can call you a cab,” Anton says, carefully casual. Porter looks past him over his shoulder and the sky is dark and deep and empty, the city lights burning under it.

There's something moving at the end of the street. It shuffles past the edge of the pool of a streetlight and Porter blinks it away. An animal. Nothing but a trick played by his exhausted, intoxicated mind. The can of beer is in his hand still, he realizes. Cold and slick with condensation.

“I'll stay,” he murmurs and hauls himself up, steps away from Anton and to Dillon's side.

He doesn't have the money for a cab anyway.

-O-

No one’s stopped by his floor to deal with the trash when Porter gets back home and he steps around the pile of garbage blocking his way, again. It's not enough to cover his nose now, the rotting food and wet paper is a taste on his tongue.

Suddenly he’s ravenous.

-O-

“I can come down,” Nick says.

Porter shifts his phone from one ear to the other, hums a distracted note. There’s rows of generic-brand breads in front of him and they’re dizzying, screaming into the aisle about enrichment, fortification, flavor. None of them look appetizing.

“You don’t have to,” he says when Nick makes an annoyed noise. He’s still staring at the wall of breads and it’s kind of anxiety-inducing, the choices. He grabs one at random, throws it into his cart and pushes it awkwardly to the end of the aisle with one hand. One of the wheels squeaks as he goes. It’s loud even though the store is crowded. Noises aren’t really working like they should.

“C’mon, dude, I wanna,” Nick cajoles and Porter hums again, maneuvers his cart around the end of the aisle. He’s got eggs, cheese, some generic candy in a cheap plastic bag. Pop-Tarts, a luxury. Bread, now. He can’t imagine what else he’ll need. Maybe he should grab something fresh, a vegetable or some fruit. He has nothing but ramen at home, ramen and half a carton of milk and some peanuts.

“I’m okay, man, I mean it,” he says absently and jumps when Nick sighs loudly, a gust of static directly in his ear. It sends goosebumps across his skin and he has to rub his hand against his leg for a moment.

“I know, fuck,” Nick says sourly. “I wanna see my little brother, Jesus Christ.”

Porter bites his lip and then sighs too, leans against his cart for a moment and knuckles at his eye socket. His head is aching in a subtle way, nothing much unless he moves his head or thinks about it too much. It’s exhaustion, really. He’s not used to evening shifts or the LA time zone yet. He’ll get there.

He thinks about Nick seeing his apartment. Seeing the mess, the mattress on the floor, the bare kitchenette. The communal bathroom and the patchy paint on the walls. The people he lives around, people like him looking for someplace better at any cost or people that have given up entirely. 

The humiliation that echoes back to him makes his breath catch. He doesn’t want Nick to see that.

He wouldn’t say anything except maybe to offer to help, maybe. Porter can’t imagine much worse than that. He’s fine, anyway, it’s all exactly what he’d expected.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbles and Nick crows wordlessly in his ear. “Gimme a few days to figure out the schedules and shit, work is unpredictable since I’m new y’know?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Nick says breathlessly and he sounds like he’s already far away, thoughts gone from the present into some gauzy future idea of their visit. Porter bites the corner of his lip on a smile. Nick won’t remember to ask about it for weeks, and then Porter can put him off again. Not forever, but maybe long enough.

“I’ll text you,” Porter says and Nick laughs, bright and pleased.

“Yeah, I’ll let you get back to shopping,” he says and then he’s gone and Porter’s still standing in the middle of the canned foods aisle, staring at a display of canned fish. The fluorescent lights are bleaching everything of depth, washing out the details. Porter reaches out and scoops up a can of tuna.

-O-

Porter stares down into his glass.

There's something pounding in his skull, thick and aching and tasting vaguely sour. He'd thought water would help but he can't make himself lift the glass.

He’s not hungover. He hasn’t gone out in days actually, except for work. Dillon’s texted him and Porter texts back, pretends like he doesn’t feel like he’s standing just adjacent to his body, puts him off when he asks about going out. Everything feels wrong, somehow. 

Somewhere far away his laptop is playing something but it's so muffled and indistinct. A laugh track plays and it seems distorted, distant and filtered through the dull roar of blood in his ears. Everything is so hard to focus on and he blinks slowly. His head is aching, dull and thick and exhausted. 

He'd planned to write. Planned to spend the day finishing a scene or two, but...

The ache in his head is building and the noise of the laptop is starting to echo in his skull, a choir of laughter and cacophonous, strident talking. They’re speaking too quickly, words impossible to catch, shrill and jagged noise in his ears. He shakes his head against the blunt ache and lifts the glass to his lips.

The water tastes ever so slightly of salt and when he blinks and holds the glass up to look there's crimson twisting and spiraling through the water.

He gags and lifts a hand to his mouth, touches wetness and his fingers come away slick and scarlet.

He gags again and drops the glass to spill on the counter, stumbles to his feet and out his door into the hall. There's no one there, not in the middle of the day, and he's grateful as he staggers into the bathroom.

There's blood all down the front of his shirt. 

He stares at himself in the mirror, the blood on his lips and chin, the broad crimson swathe on his shirt. When he raises a trembling hand and prods at his nose a fresh drop slips down and into the seam of his lips. When he wipes at it the blood just smears across his cheek.

He's wan, hollow-cheeked, eyes too wide and the shadows under his eyes too dark. He looks mad when he bares his teeth to look, pinkish blood and spit coating everything.

“Just a nosebleed,” he tells his reflection. His voice sounds hollow in the cold acoustics of the little bathroom.


	3. can't feel my face - the weeknd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to molly for beta and support!! 
> 
> enjoy xoxo

Porter makes it five days, working listlessly on his script and putting Dillon off and going to work, coming home drained. He writes a hundred words, deletes them all. Writes another hundred words and realizes he’s going to have to research the layout of the streets of a suburb he’s not sure if he invented or not.

He’s not… avoiding Dillon. Not exactly. He just doesn’t know what to say.

He’s still not sleeping well and there’s this dream he keeps having. Something about walking out into the waves. Something that leaves him flinching when he leaves work late enough for the fog to have started rolling in off the ocean, bringing the smell of brine and stagnant water with it. It feels too much like his dreams. Those nights, he goes home with his back tight and head low.

His head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, all the time.

It doesn’t help that when he picks up his phone and it’s a text from Dillon his heart flips over. It’s a crush, Porter isn’t stupid enough to ignore that. It’s a bad idea, Dillon’s got _bad idea_ written all over him even though he keeps texting Porter pictures of tiny dogs and snide commentary and awful selfies.

He thinks they’re friends, he and Dillon. He thinks maybe Dillon wouldn’t mind it if Porter kissed him but he also thinks that maybe Dillon isn’t looking for anything more than that.

Dillon keeps texting him pictures of dogs. Porter doesn’t know if that means something.

-O-

_Porter u hate me,_ Dillon’s text says. Porter sighs, knuckles at the corner of his eye and sets his phone back down.

The dreams about beaches and the things beneath the waves haven’t stopped, nights that leave the phantom taste of rotting seaweed and salt on his tongue for hours after he wakes up. It hasn’t helped his paranoia at all and the dark circles under his eyes are more pronounced every day. He keeps seeing things moving out of the corners of his eyes when he’s walking down the streets and it’s nothing, always nothing.

His phone buzzes again.

 _U H8 ME,_ it says when he thumbs the screen on.

 _i do not go away,_ he texts back and quirks a tired smile when his phone buzzes again the instant he sets it back down.

He goes to make some ramen. He hasn’t eaten in... too long.

He’s got a string of texts when he gets back and he swipes them away without reading, hits the call button and tucks his phone between his ear and shoulder and reaches for his fork.

“You fucking hate me, you fuck,” Dillon opens with and Porter laughs with his mouth full, swallows noisily.

“I do now,” he counters and sucks up another noodle over Dillon’s offended noise.

“Whatever,” Dillon huffs. “I’m a fucking treasure, fuck you.”

Porter hums, noncommittal. For a moment there’s silence, the sound of Porter stirring his broth echoing back at him over the line. It occurs to him to wonder where Dillon is because it’s the middle of the day and most days Dillon has work, whether he texts him or not.

“Come out with me tonight,” Dillon says and he sounds a little muffled, like he’s leaning away from his phone.

Porter hauls in a breath. He doesn’t have work or anything. He could go.

He wonders if he should say no, if he should stay away from Dillon, but then Dillon’s back laughing in his ear and Porter’s stomach is roiling.

“C’mon, we haven’t hung out in ages,” he cajoles. He sounds like he always does, like nothing in the world matters and it’s all a joke, and it feels good to hear. Porter had missed it. He’d missed Dillon.

“I miss you,” Dillon says, the silence rolling on long enough it’s almost become awkward. Like he’s read Porter’s mind. Porter closes his eyes against the sweet pang in his chest.

“Yeah, sure, let’s go out,” he mumbles and when Dillon crows triumphantly he grins despite himself. His eyes feel heavy when he rubs at them but he’s pretty much used to it now. It’s nothing he can’t work through, nothing a can of something fluorescent won’t cure. Maybe a coffee, though that hasn’t been doing enough lately.

“Alright,” Dillon is saying delightedly, “dress up real nice, okay? Daddy’s taking you somewhere _special_.”

“You’re actually the worst,” Porter tells him but he’s laughing, his stomach fluttering and he’s already going through his piles of laundry in his head. He can do _real nice_. He can do that. “It’s some fucking house party, don’t lie to me.”

“ _Baby_ ,” Dillon says, fake-wounded, and when Porter just snorts he laughs brightly. “Yeah, I guess. It’ll be a good time.”

“Yeah, alright,” says Porter.

-O-

It’s not really a party so much as all of Dillon’s friends crammed into his little apartment, getting _ready_ for some party, and Porter had come because he’d wanted to see Dillon but he’s already tired.

It’s the kind of tired that coffee hadn’t done anything for except make his heartbeat so much louder in his ears. The floaty kind of tired that he’s wading through like water, flowing over him and making everything easier. He doesn’t care, doesn’t care about the drink in his hand or what it is or how much he’s had. It’s all part of the exhaustion.

There’s no one paying attention to him but there are plenty of people crammed into Dillon’s little apartment, people Porter vaguely knows now, people that wave to him. He could talk to them, maybe, but he’s a little drunk and the haze of pot smoke is so thick in the air he’s sure he’s a little high too, and it seems like too much work. 

“I think I wanna cut my hair,” he blurts. His tongue is thick and clumsy in his mouth and he doesn’t think anyone is going to hear him but it spills out anyway. 

A hand lands on his arm and he flinches a little, turns his head slowly to find Mija smiling at him. 

“I can do haircuts,” she says and Porter blinks at her dully for a second. 

He doesn’t hate her. He wants to hate her, like he wants to hate Dillon too. Like he _does_ hate whatever nebulous arrangement they have that seems to mean absolutely nothing to anyone but Porter. But she’s kind, sharply hilarious. Seems to run her life with a kind of militant productivity that’s so alien and terrifying to Porter that he can’t help but be fascinated by it. 

“Uh,” he says, not understanding for a long moment. He doesn’t remember what he’d said until she reaches out, steady fingers running through his shaggy, tangled hair. Her fingernails are sharp and feel nice scratching over his scalp and he tilts his head into it without thinking. 

“Dillon’s got clippers somewhere,” she continues and he understands, blinks slowly. She grins, tilts her head conspiratorially. She doesn’t _look_ too drunk. “We can go through his shit to look for ‘em.” 

The smile draws across his face without his permission and she’s smiling back, pulling him to his feet. Her nails are firm against his wrist but it’s grounding, he can feel himself sliding back into his body in some undefinable way. Present again. 

“Here,” Mija says and they’re turning into Dillon’s room. Tripping over laundry, knocking over an empty beer bottle someone had left in the corner and she’s crawling under the bed, her legs sticking out and wiggling. He can hear her shuffling things around and Porter watches blankly for a long moment. He’s still spinning with exhaustion and alcohol but the excitement is filtering through. 

It’s been a year, maybe more since he’d last cut his hair. It just hadn’t seemed to matter, and he hadn’t cared so much about his appearance before. 

He carefully leans back against a poster, paper crinkling under his shoulder. He doesn’t want to think about why he suddenly wants to look good. He knows, but he can pretend to himself he doesn’t and it keeps the hot little glow of embarrassment at bay. 

“Fuck,” Mija bites out, muffled by the bed, and then, “got it!” 

She wriggles back out, a black case in her hands. She’s coated in soft grey dust, electric hair rumpled and matted up on one side, and she looks so human. He likes her, he realizes, even if he doesn’t want to. 

“C’mon,” she says and then her hand is around Porter’s wrist again and they’re back in the hall, stumbling past Dillon’s roommate - his name is probably Tanner, Porter thinks - and a girl Porter doesn’t recognize, turning at the end into the bathroom. 

There’s a chair in there already, on its side behind the toilet, and he reaches to get it when Mija points. She’s popping open the case, setting what looks like an electric razor and some strange bits of plastic aside. She seems to know what she’s doing and the excitement is swelling in his stomach, breathless and sweet. 

“Whatcha want?” she asks, looking up at him in the mirror. 

He shrugs without thinking about it. She grins. 

“You’d look pretty good with side swept bangs, I think,” she muses. “Maybe an undercut? It’s a little high school hipster-emo but I think you got the bone structure to pull it off.” 

He blinks at her again and she laughs, high and kind and only a little mocking. 

“Do you trust me?” she asks. Her words are layered with sarcasm but Porter looks down at the clippers in her hand, the click of her long nails against the hard plastic, the way she stands so steadily in heels he can’t imagine being able to walk in. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles and she nudges him towards the chair. 

“Take off your shirt,” she orders and he stares at her in the mirror. It takes her a comically long time to notice. She rolls her eyes when she takes in his wide, blurry eyes and the way he’s suddenly clutching the hem of his shirt. 

“I’m not into twinks,” she snorts and turns, suddenly so much closer. She smells like pot and fruit juice and lingering cologne and he doesn’t like the soft pang in his chest. The smell reminds him of Dillon and he hates it, he hates imagining Dillon’s scent on her. 

“You’re gonna hate having all that hair on you,” she insists, “just take off the shirt.” 

“Okay,” he mutters, defeated, and starts fumbling his way out of his shirt. 

The bathroom air is chill against his skin. He shivers and then Mija’s hands are on his shoulders, guiding him into the seat. They leave warm impression on his skin and he shivers again when they withdraw. 

“I’m gonna make you look _so_ fucking good,” she says and then her hands are in his hair, long fingernails combing across his scalp and he breathes in. He feels giddy. It’s a beat in his chest, the softness of his ever-present exhaustion and the skew of alcohol and he wants this, he realizes. He really does. He wants a change. 

“Cool,” he gets out, a little late. Mija laughs but her hands are steady sectioning off his hair, reaching up and pulling pins out of her own hair to hold it in place. He can’t look at himself - it’s too much, his pale, beaky face and how skinny he looks without a shirt on - but he can watch her. 

Her hand lands on his cheek, tilts his head with a kind of gentle ruthlessness. He closes his eyes and lets the sway of alcohol and her hands on him lull him into something like a doze. 

“Here,” she says and then her nails are drumming against his shoulder and he jolts up, blinks open blurry eyes. 

His hair is a mess of pins and awkward sections but he thinks he can see, dizzy and unfocused, what Mija’s vision is. 

“Good?” Mija asks and he nods once, eyes sliding closed again. She laughs, quietly amused, and then her hands are gone and he hears the buzz of the clippers switching on. They’re far away, distant like everything is. Even the excitement, the thrum of nerves at such a sudden and semi-permanent decision. Even that barely touches him. 

Her hand lands back in his hair, tilts his head and then the clippers are brushing his scalp. He breathes out. Feels hair drop away, brushing his back as it falls. 

Mija’s hands move on, the clippers blazing a trail against the side of his head in cool scalp and the tingle of hair settling in ways it isn’t used to yet. Time isn’t moving like it should but he doesn’t mind. The only thing he can really grasp is that he wishes he’d brought his drink because the buzz is starting to fade and the room is so cold. 

“Be careful of Dillon,” Mija murmurs suddenly and her voice follows so naturally from the buzz of the clippers and the shushing of their breathing that for a beat Porter doesn’t realize she’s speaking at all. 

And then her words soak through and he jerks in place. 

“Sit still,” Mija scolds and Porter settles numbly. 

“What do you mean?” he tries. His heart is suddenly beating too fast and there’s heat rising in his cheeks, embarrassment and he hadn’t wanted anyone to know about this. About Dillon, about how Porter’s heart can’t seem to stay still in his chest when he thinks about him. 

“He’s a bad idea,” Mija says gently and it’s only the clippers buzzing next to his ear that stops Porter from moving again. 

Another lock of hair falls to the floor, brushing against his shoulder as it drops. It feels like moths, like the anxiety and hurt and longing fluttering against his ribs. He can’t look at himself. 

“You’re a good kid,” Mija says a moment later and she sounds sad. Porter’s been avoiding looking at himself, easy with the blur of tiredness and alcohol, but he risks opening his eyes to look at her in the mirror. She’s not looking back, her eyes on her hands in his hair, her mouth a twist of some emotion Porter can’t decipher. For a moment Porter wants to stand, to hug her, and then her eyes are flashing to his in the mirror and he glances away. 

“Thanks,” Porter says and he’s trying for sarcastic but it comes out something else entirely. She smiles, just a little quirk at the corner of painted lips. 

“He likes you,” she says after a beat and Porter catches the way she doesn’t glance up in the mirror. Her eyes are on her hands moving through his hair. “But he’s… you know. Just be careful.” 

Porter bites down carefully on the corner of his mouth and tries to slow his breathing. 

The excitement is turning to nerves and he still can’t make himself look in the mirror. The niggling, awful worry that he’s making an idiot of himself, that he’ll look worse, that the people outside the bathroom door, fuck, _Dillon_ will see and he can’t stand the idea. 

“I will,” he manages eventually and she looks up, catches his eyes for a smile before she’s looking down again. 

“Anyway,” she says easily, “I could fucking _murder_ a beer right now.” 

The laugh takes him by surprise, rises through him so easily and shakes him harder than he was expecting. Mija makes a mockingly annoyed noise, pulls the clippers away until he settles back again, a little deflated. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath until the dizziness isn’t anxiety anymore. Until the anxiety is diffuse and as unfocused as the rest of him is. 

Time moves strangely and it feels like it takes no time at all before Mija’s fingernails are raking through his hair again and he’s jolting like he’s waking up. It’s disorienting, he’s groggy and he opens his eyes without thinking. 

The first thing he sees is the bright spray of Mija’s hair, blue and electric, and then he registers the unfamiliar dark shape in front of her. 

He looks different, he realizes dimly and the smile is uncontrollable as it spreads. 

His eyes are dark and hazy and the circles under them look like bruises but there’s something about the swoop of hair over his forehead, the way the nape of his neck is bare now. The thick arch of shoulder to throat somehow made vulnerable and he realizes belatedly that he’s going bright red. 

He looks _good_. 

“Holy shit, babe,” Mija says and leans against his shoulder. She’s grinning, huge and bright and honestly pleased. “You look fucking good.” 

Porter’s hand lifts to his mouth without any conscious thought and he’s pressing a knuckle to his lips, staring at himself with wide eyes. They’re so dark, huge, he looks so different and he thinks… he thinks he likes it. 

“I do,” he says and the smile spreads wider across his face. Bigger and bigger, giddy, happiness surging up in him. 

Mija’s hand comes around his face, long fingernails pressing into his cheeks and pinching his mouth together. He laughs, reckless and muffled. She’s grinning at him, flushed and broad and sincere, so pleased, and he loves her for a moment. 

“Get out there,” she says and lets go of his face, pats his cheek once more before tipping back on her heels. His back is suddenly cold and he shivers, still smiling so impossibly wide. “Kill a beer for me.” 

He fumbles into his shirt, gets the door open and the hallway feels weighted different. Gravity’s been realigned and he doesn’t stumble as he slides past Tanner and the girl he’s still talking to. 

The living room is as crowded as it had been before and Porter pauses in the doorway, settles into the weight of his own body. 

Dillon’s leaning against the wall across the room, staring into space. He’s alone for once. There’s a bottle in his hand, wine, half empty. Porter watches him bring it to his lips and take an absent gulp and the heat that roars to life in his stomach is so hungry. He wants Dillon. He wants to press him against the wall and take the bottle from his hand and kiss him until the taste of the wine is in his own mouth. 

He wets his lips, shifts his feet. He isn’t certain what to do, only that he needs to _do_ , that he has to act before this strange confidence leaves him. 

He knows the exact moment that Dillon sees him because for a long moment his face is pure, unguarded. A brief, blank lack of recognition and then a burst like a sunrise and Porter grins, giddy and uncontrollable. Dillon’s watching him and it’s like that first night all over again, the focus of Dillon’s attention like the sun except he feels _powerful_. 

He looks good. He can see it in Dillon’s face. 

He picks up a bottle as he makes his way across the room. It’s absolutely not his - it’s barely half-full, and he doesn’t know whose it’d been before this, but he brings it to his lips anyway. Beer, bitter and hoppy. 

Dillon watches him the whole way across the room and Porter’s heart is screaming in his chest. 

“Did Mija cut your hair just now?” Dillon asks and his voice is thick, a little off. Porter grins up at him. He hasn’t felt this before, he doesn’t think, this powerful and brazen and desireable. 

“Yeah,” he says and takes a long drink. He leaves the bottle pressed against his lip, watches Dillon’s eyes drop to his mouth and lift again to his eyes. “I like it, she’s good at it.” 

“You look…” Dillon says and then he’s trailing off, head tilting. His eyes don’t stray from tracing Porter’s face and Porter can’t look away, stares up at him and holds his breath because the moment is impossible and he can’t be the one to break it. 

Dillon grins finally, a flashing bright thing that Porter almost recognizes. He looks wild, bacchanalian, so pleased and happy that Porter’s breath catches. 

“Let’s dip out, the party’s like a block away,” Dillon offers quietly. “Ditch everyone here.” 

Porter smiles back. He can’t help himself, can’t reign it back from his face. 

“Yeah,” he says.

-O-

The party is crowded and quieter than Porter is expecting, or maybe he’s just less overwhelmed than he ever has been before. He’s drunk again, had drained the beer and then half of the wine, giggling in Dillon’s room as he’d struggled into his shoes. Leaning into each other, and Dillon is not a quiet person. Not shy, pays no attention to personal space.

It’s not out of the ordinary for him to be so close but he can’t seem to stop looking at Porter and Porter can’t stop smiling. 

He’s floating on it, flushed and drunk and magnanimous with it. Dillon’s hand is on his waist, then gone again. Pressed to his side and then spinning away, reeling back minutes later to lean into Porter’s space. 

Someone’s talking to him about football, some disparaging comment about the crowds and how much people care, and _don’t people get it’s just a game?_.

Porter smiles, lifts his drink and nods. He doesn’t care.

Dillon’s at his side again. He’d been gone but he isn’t anymore, his hand at Porter’s arm, tugging him away. Porter waves apologetically to the girl he’d been talking to and lets himself be tugged along. It’s not a loud party but there’s something about the music that makes it seem close, almost intimate. It’s older music, Porter thinks dizzily, swallows the last of his drink and drops his cup to skitter away across the ground. Something with a jazz riff, a brass section. Someone's crooning and Porter can't tell if it's the music or someone else.

“You okay?” Dillon asks quietly. Porter smiles. His head is loose on his neck but he thinks he bobs a nod.

“C’mon,” Dillon says and then he’s drawing away, his hand at Porter’s wrist again. They’re tumbling deeper into the house, up half a flight of stairs and then around a corner. Porter doesn’t bother keeping track of how they go, ricochets off a wall into Dillon and they spend a moment tangled together, a moment of wandering hands until they’re upright again. 

The room Dillon pulls him into is warm and close and crowded and he settles to the floor when Dillon pulls him down. He doesn’t recognize any faces but he isn’t looking too hard either. This once he doesn’t care at all.

Someone nudges his arm, insistent, and he reaches out blindly, takes what they hand him with clumsy hands.

It’s a mirror, neat little lines of white powder cutting across it.

Porter laughs.

“It’s coke, don’t worry, you don’t have to,” Dillon whispers in his ear. His hand is back at Porter’s waist. “Here, pass it over.”

Porter looks back at him. He’s watching Porter with a smile that’s got an edge of neon to it.

“Hurry the fuck _up_ ,” someone snaps from their far side and Porter settles the mirror on his knees, leans down and snorts the line.

His hands are steady passing the mirror on and Dillon’s eyes are dark on him as he takes it. He doesn’t look away until his head is dipping low and there’s something that’s speeding through Porter’s heartbeat. It’s not until he sniffs belatedly and the bittersweet chemical taste is spreading over the back of his tongue that he puts it together and he’s grinning already, too wide, too obvious. 

Dillon hands off the mirror smoothly and then his hand is in Porter’s tugging him upright. There’s someone talking and he thinks it’s to them but Dillon’s pulling him out the door again. For a moment Porter wants to pull away, turn back into the warmth and dimness of that room, but Dillon’s hand is hot on his wrist and he follows Dillon instead. 

“You didn’t have to,” Dillon says and then they’re at the stairs and his body is so distant, joints loose and muscles tight and heartbeat running through him so rapidly. It’s a stab of nerves for a moment before he’s blinking and they’re at the bottom of the stairs, turning deeper into the house, he’s not sure if Dillon knows where they’re going or if they’re just _going_. 

“I wanted to,” he says and he’s not sure Dillon’s listening or can even hear him until he’s glancing back again, the smile he gives so much less glittering and broad and unreal. 

They fetch up in a living room Porter doesn’t recognize and the music is louder here, the brass and the crooning singer, loud and impossible to focus on but it’s shivering through him anyway and it’s something so, so close to good. 

When Porter turns into him Dillon’s arm comes around his waist, his hands settling naturally on Porter’s body.

“Dance with me,” Porter murmurs into his shoulder and Dillon laughs, astonishingly quiet. Suddenly they’re swaying, Dillon’s hand is at his waist and he’s taking Porter’s other hand in his. They’re dancing like kids, like it’s Porter’s first prom all over again. He breathes in against it, deep and all the way to his lungs, lets back out something that wants to be breathless laughter. He crushes it ruthlessly and tilts his head back.

His mouth brushes over Dillon’s jaw, warm skin, so soft, and he’s biting down before the thought has finished passing through him. Gently, with numb teeth and Dillon jolts against him. Shivers, brief and incandescent. 

His head turns and Porter ducks away just in time, catches Dillon’s eyes opening again. He’d been trying to kiss him and for a moment Porter’s so pleased. Pleased to deny him, to tease Dillon like this and then say no. It’s powerful. 

“ _Porter,_ ” Dillon breathes and he sounds delighted and scandalized in equal measure. 

Porter doesn’t reply, ducks forward again so his face is against Dillon’s shoulder, pressed into his neck. The contact is skittering in his chest, riding the edge of what he wants and what he doesn’t, skin to skin an overwhelming sensation. They’re still swaying and it’s so out of time with the music now. 

“Porter,” Dillon murmurs and his hand is in Porter’s hair, tugging with jittery, relentless gentleness. “Porter, hey, listen.” 

Porter lets his head be guided back, focuses loosely on Dillon’s face. 

“You’re beautiful,” Dillon tells him and he’s smiling so wide, eyes so unwavering on Porter. 

He laughs, free and breathless.

-O-

He swims to consciousness and his hangover isn’t as bad as it could be. He’s warm and he rolls his head against the pillow to find he’s at Dillon’s again.

The posters on the wall are getting to be familiar, the piles of laundry are clothes he’s seen Dillon wear. He can smell weed; Tanner’s home, will offer to smoke him out like he does every time even though Porter’s never said yes. He knows which door in the hallway leads to the bathroom. He knows how to turn on the coffeemaker, where the milk and sugar is. 

He knows if he stays and makes the coffee Dillon will take a mug from his hand and press a laughing kiss to his cheek and it’ll flutter in his stomach like butterflies. He’ll want to throw up but it’ll only be a little bit his hangover, more the roll in his chest that’s Dillon’s soft, unguarded morning expressions. 

Dillon’s spooned behind him, a leg between Porter’s. He’s breathing slowly, evenly.

Porter carefully extricates himself.

It’s not until he’s at the edge of the mattress, sitting up and looking for his shirt in the mess on the floor that Dillon even stirs. He barely even opens his eyes, just makes a discontent noise and reaches out, fingertips running slowly down Porter’s spine.

There are dark circles under his eyes, soft and purple and tender-looking. He looks exhausted like this and honest with sleep. He looks beautiful.

Porter wants to stay. He knows Dillon would let him stay.

“I’m heading out,” he says quietly and Dillon sighs, reaches out again and drags sleepy fingertips down Porter’s arm. Something small and hot and wanting unfurls in the pit of his stomach but he pushes it down, ignores it. Dillon’s hand falls away in a moment anyway, his face smoothing back into sleep.

His shirt is half under the bed. He steals a hoodie from Dillon’s floor. His keys and wallet and phone are on the kitchen countertop, his shoes by the door. He pulls them on and walks out into watery, pale morning sunlight.

-O-

There's someone standing in the stairwell of his building when he gets back. They're swamped in a jacket easily four sizes too big, sleeves hanging down over their hands, hood pulled low over their face. They turn when Porter opens the door, the rustle of cheap fabric so abrupt and loud, and for a second Porter hesitates in the doorway.

When the noise fades there’s no sound in the stairwell but the echoing rasp of his own breathing.

He takes a step forward and the person doesn't move, doesn't look away. They still don't move as Porter cautiously takes the first step into the flight of stairs. It's not until he's halfway up the stairs that they lift their head to watch him climb.

Their mouth is thin, lips slack. A flash of yellow teeth and white skin.

Porter stops for a moment and the person's mouth - he can't tell gender, age, nothing but skin so grey it looks bloodless - starts to open.

Porter bolts up the stairs, rattles through the door to his floor and sprints down the hall to his apartment. It takes him precious moments to get his key in the lock and then he's through the door, getting one last look back down the hall as he goes to slam it.

There's no one there but he thinks he sees movement through the tiny window in the door to the stairwell.

He makes himself some tea, microwaving a mug of water and dropping a teabag in after it, a squirt of honey. His hands shake when he wraps them around his mug. The tea sloshes when he lifts it to his mouth and he almost burns himself, almost tips it all down his front. When he goes to set it down it rattles for a second against the laminate of the counter.

There's something... _wrong_. Something terrible. Something he shies away from when he thinks about it seriously but he can't explain it, can't explain anything. Something… 

He stops himself because he can’t use the word _evil_.

He almost drops his phone when he fumbles it out of his pocket, clinging to it for a long moment. It’s cool under his fingertips, warming rapidly and he sets it down again on the counter. He doesn’t know who to call. The police won’t do anything, not when it’s probably nothing more than a bum sleeping in the stairwell to stay out of the sun.

He thinks about Dillon. He thinks about calling him and asking him to come pick him up. Asking to use his couch for a few days. Dillon would let him, if he didn’t just offer his bed.

His stomach turns at the idea of Dillon stepping into the stairwell with… with whoever that had been.

He wraps his arms around himself, curls forward until his forehead rests against the counter. He starts to shake and then he can’t stop.


	4. move in slow motion - florian kruse and hendrik burkhard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!! xoxo

It’s skirting dangerously close to too late to get to work on time when Porter finally cracks his door open.

Fear is swirling cold and ugly and riotous in his stomach but the hallway is empty and when he steps cautiously into it nothing moves. The lack of motion does nothing to calm his nerves. 

He wants something obvious, something he can understand or at least fight or run from.

He keeps his keys in his hand as he opens the door to the stairs, craning his neck to look down into the stairwell and then up, trying to see the row of landings. It’s too dark, too many lights dim or out entirely. Porter swallows back a pulse of frustrated fear at this building, the cheap landlords and the lack of care. There are so many places for something to hide.

Some _one_ , he corrects himself and steps cautiously out onto the landing.

Nothing happens, not as he climbs down the stairs or as he pushes open the door into the innocent light of early evening. It’s cool outside, cool like relief. He takes a deep breath and then curses, sprints for the bus pulling into the stop just down the street.

-O-

Work is even more desolate than usual. There’s no one in for hours at a time, then a few people wandering in to buy cigarettes or beer or candy or whatever. Porter pays no attention. He watches through the windows, the bare few feet of pavement lit up by the store’s sign and lights. People pass, hunched and alone or in groups laughing and gesturing. He thinks he’s waiting for someone to look in, to see him, but none of them do.

Dillon slams a Snickers and a Bud Light on the counter and Porter jumps so hard the legs of his stool rattle against the floor. 

He thinks he makes some noise, high and startled, but the fear is roaring in his ears so loudly that all he can make out is his own wild panting. Dillon’s smiling he sees when he blinks away the haze, sly and pleased and amused, and Porter hadn't even noticed him coming in.

“Did I scare ya?” he asks and Porter rolls his eyes, glances at the clock. Half an hour until he has to go home, until he has to face the echoing emptiness of the stairwell again.

“Sure,” he agrees distractedly and reaches out to slide Dillon’s candy and beer over to him. “S’this all?”

Dillon’s pouting when he looks back up, fake and exaggerated and hiding what Porter thinks could be amusement, maybe concern. He rolls his eyes to himself. Fucking actors.

“Cop me a pack of smokes,” Dillon bargains and Porter snorts, smiles in spite of himself.

“You’re going to get me fired,” he tells Dillon. Dillon grins in answer, sways in to lean against the counter and props himself up with an elbow against the plexiglass. He looks unfair like this, like a movie star or a wet dream and Porter wants to roll his eyes again but instead he crosses his arms, tries to school his face into judgmental impatience, arched eyebrow and all.

“How about for a kiss?” Dillon murmurs and Porter hates his tone a little, the joking half-sincerity Porter can’t untangle to mean anything at all.

He reaches for the cigarettes. He can take it out of his paycheck.

Dillon grins when Porter slides them over, kisses his fingers and presses them against the glass for a moment. Porter watches him and wishes vaguely it weren’t there, that he were brave and could demand Dillon pay him back or tell him to find some other boy to play like this.

Then Dillon’s glancing at the clock and the sincerity is back, his face dropping the teasing flirty mask between one breath and the next and Porter can breathe.

“When do you get off?” Dillon asks and he’s smiling when he looks back at Porter. “Soon, right? We should do something.”

“Twenty minutes,” Porter mumbles and thumbs at the door. “I’ll be out in like half an hour, now go before you get me fired.”

Dillon throws some money on the counter and laughs the whole way out, cracking his beer as he goes. Porter watches him go, helpless.

When he goes to count the cash there’s enough to almost cover the cigarettes too and Porter sighs, knuckles at his eye for a moment. There’s something in him that wants to ache but he shoves it down and shuffles the bills into the right drawers, scribbles out a note to his supervisor about the difference. He’ll hear about it later probably but he really doesn’t care.

-O-

He waves to the girl that takes the shift after his as he shuffles out the door. She’s on the true graveyard shift and she looks like it, shadowed eyes and skinny wrists and hoodies that aren’t the uniform but suit her in some way. Formless. Huge, warm enough to chase off the institutional chill of the store. Porter flexes numbed fingers and envies her.

It’s warmer outside and he pauses in the doorway, hefts his bag higher on his shoulder, glances at the sky. It’s not even midnight but the sky is still dark, black against the shine of city lights starting to burn. 

Dillon’s loitering at the corner when he looks back down, cigarette in his mouth. He’s looking at his phone and Porter just watches him for a moment. He’s beautiful and lit like this it’s just like that first night, an echo of déjà vu that stings bittersweet.

He's found a pair of sunglasses, Porter notes when he walks up, pink-rimmed and ridiculously huge. They reflect the streetlights, opaque and cartoonish, and Porter rolls his eyes and snatches them off his face. Dillon blinks for a moment and then smiles, tosses his cigarette to the ground. 

“Fucking rude,” he says easily and when he goes to snatch the sunglasses back Porter lets him, just snorts when Dillon settles them back on his nose and throws his arm around Porter’s shoulders. Porter lets himself be tugged into motion. 

He doesn’t know where they’re going or what Dillon wants to do and he doesn’t particularly care.

 _Anything’s better than home_ , he thinks before he can cut the thought off.

“Missed you this morning,” Dillon says and keeps going when Porter looks up, trying to search out what he’d meant. “We should do something, we should go somewhere, how are you?”

Porter weighs it out; talking about it, trying to explain the person in the stairwell and all the things that have happened recently, the sum total of strangeness and terror and disquiet that amounts to nothing he can take to anyone. No proof, no facts, nothing but paranoia and easily dismissed coincidences.

“There's some shit going on,” Porter says at last and when Dillon arches an eyebrow he shrugs. “Don't know how to talk about it. Don't really wanna think about it.”

Dillon grins.

“If you're looking to take your mind off things I've got a little something that might help,” he says, singsong. Porter squints at him, unsure. 

He doesn’t understand but he thinks of the cool glass of a bottle under his fingertips, bitter chemical tang at the back of his tongue, his world sliding sideways into something too far away to have to touch. 

Dillon laughs when he sees Porter's expression.

“C’mon babypups,” he says, spins in place on the sidewalk to walk backwards, facing Porter. “It’ll be fun, I’ll take you home if you don’t like it.”

“Babypups?” Porter asks because he doesn’t want to think about the flutter in his heart that’s all the brilliant smile Dillon’s flashing at him under his ridiculous sunglasses, the shake of nerves in the pit of his stomach. Dillon winces, turns and deftly dodges a lamppost to walk at Porter’s side.

“You’re right, that’s weird,” he says agreeably. “I’m uncomfortable, not calling you that again.”

Porter waits a moment, a few steps. Dillon's eyeing him sidelong, gaze bright and playful.

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles and Dillon laughs.

-O-

Dillon takes him back to his apartment first and kicks open the door, starts yelling the second he crosses the threshold. Tanner’s laid out on the couch with his bong and a box of Triscuits and somehow it all feels so easy - familiar and content and something like _home_.

Porter pulls out of Dillon’s grip as soon as the thought crosses his mind. He heads to the kitchen, pours himself a cup of coffee from a pot he has no way of knowing the age of and takes a sip.

It’s bitter and cold but he smiles into it as Tanner hauls himself upright, scratching at his balls and ambling after Dillon. They’re shouting back and forth, something about groceries and then something about weed, a call and response that seems rehearsed and comfortable. Dillon isn’t gone long anyway, back in a moment to loop an arm around Porter’s waist and swing him around, stealing the mug from his hand and taking a drink.

“Ready to _roll_ , kiddo?” Dillon asks and Porter pulls on a smile, trying to bite back the nerves.

“Sure,” he says and takes the mug back, takes a fortifying gulp of coffee.

Dillon’s mouth comes down on the top of his head, loud and smacking and obnoxious, and then he’s reaching into his pocket and holding out an outstretched hand. Porter’s stomach turns over again. It’s a little baggie, empty apart from two tiny, off-white capsules. Innocent-looking but Porter’s stomach is still turning over.

“It’s molly,” Dillon says and his tone is suddenly businesslike and it’s so unexpected that Porter blinks up at him. Dillon’s looking back and he’s squinting, expression evaluating, so out of place on his face. For a paranoid, deranged moment Porter doesn’t recognize him. “You ever do it before?” 

Porter laughs and it feels like it should be hysterical but it comes out nervous. 

“No,” he admits and Dillon nods, still looking at him like he’s something Dillon doesn’t quite recognize, like he’s a problem he needs to work out the solution to. 

“It’ll feel… like coke,” Dillon says and then laughs and shrugs and he’s Dillon again, smiling at Porter so broadly. “Or, like, not at all like that but... You’ll be really happy and feel really good about touching things.” 

It’s not enough of an explanation, not much of one at all. 

“Okay,” Porter says anyway. His voice is a little too thick in his throat and he has to swallow hard to breathe properly. Dillon’s head tilts and his eyes go soft on him. His hand comes up to cup Porter’s cheek, fingers sliding back through Porter’s hair. 

“You don’t have to,” he says and Porter remembers the same words, the dimness of the room. The chemical numbness in his teeth and how it had tasted, the way he couldn’t stop sucking it into his mouth. The high flutter of his heartbeat, the sharpness running through him like involuntary clarity. 

His heartbeat is slowing now. Calming, somehow, under Dillon’s hands. 

There's a lava lamp in the corner of the living room and Porter doesn't know how he hadn't noticed it before but he's noticing now. It glows soft and red and it's moving so slow, so sluggish, and Porter bites his lip against a smile that feels unreal crossing his mouth. A distraction. He’s just trying not to think, he knows. It’s still comforting in some inexplicable way. 

“I wanna try it,” he says with more determination than he’d thought he’d had in him and Dillon nods. 

“I’ll take care of you,” he says and it comes out like things always do from Dillon, a joke and something deeper that Porter wants to believe is sincere. “You’ll be fine, it’ll be fun!” 

“It’d better be,” he gets out, an attempt at a joke of his own. 

He manages to barely flinch when the hand cupping his cheek moves, fingers stroking and then pressing gently just under his jaw. 

“Open up,” Dillon says and his voice is still teasing, still amused but maybe a little softer now.

Porter opens his mouth and his tongue comes out automatically. He doesn’t miss the glint in Dillon’s eyes, the little twitch of his lips and tightness in his jaw. It passes a moment later and then Dillon is reaching up and setting something very carefully on his tongue.

And then he reaches down again, wrapping a hand around Porter’s wrist and lifting to bring the cup of coffee to his lips. Porter swallows, again, more automatically than anything. He thinks he feels something go down with the coffee but he can’t be sure and he blinks up at Dillon.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting but Dillon stealing his cup from his shaky hand and throwing something back so casually it seems not to mean anything isn’t it. It doesn’t seem climactic enough, like it means as much as Porter thinks it _should_. 

Dillon’s sliding the cup away down the counter a moment later and Porter’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Give it about half an hour,” Dillon says and his eyes are still soft in a way that makes something squirm embarrassingly in Porter’s stomach. He turns away to wash his hands pointlessly and avoid Dillon’s eyes. “There’s a party next street over we can head to but if you’re feeling sketched out we can come back here, just to chill.” 

Porter peeks at him and he’s not looking anymore, leaning his hip against the counter and tapping away quietly at his splintered phone screen. It paints his cheekbones, the flash of eyelash, gilding him cold and silver.

-O-

They’re only twenty minutes away from Dillon’s apartment when Porter starts to smile uncontrollably.

He tries to stop it at first, to purse his lips so that it’s not so obvious but then he’s swaying a little and their shoulders brush and Dillon turns to grin at him like he _knows_. 

Dillon’s luminous, shining in the yellow light of the streetlights. 

He’s haloed, and then Porter realizes Dillon’s _glowing_ , radiating his own light like the sun and Porter stares for a moment. Quiet hunger yawns in him before fuzzily he blinks it away and smiles. His face feels strange, like the smile is extending past his mouth. Dillon is reaching out and his knuckles brush against Porter’s jaw and the touch is so _much_ against his skin and he gasps softly. 

“Lightweight,” Dillon murmurs and it’s delighted. Porter blinks at him slowly, beams at him like the teasing is praise. He thinks it is, it _feels_ like it is and he laughs out loud.

They keep going, the night air brushing his skin in a way he’s never noticed before. The high, he knows, and it’s pushing up and up through him and it’s so easy to let go. To let Dillon’s arm loop around his waist, let Dillon’s fingers press into his hip. It feels nice, breathlessly nice and the streetlights are so beautiful. 

The porch step catches on his toe and he giggles, lifts his foot up onto the step and sways for a moment before heaving himself up. Dillon’s urging him along, swaying the same way, only a little steadier on his feet. 

There’s music playing over the speakers and it occurs to him, dizzy, to wonder who’d picked it and why, what it means to them. He thinks about looking for them, _knowing_ them, and then the music is building in his ears as they pass a speaker. It’s something buzzing, just an edge too loud for the speakers to take. It prickles over his skin, hums through him and he inhales and the air fills his lungs thin and perfect. 

There are people in the house. So many of them and they slide past Porter before he can grasp them, Dillon’s hand a brand in his pulling him along. He goes and goes, takes the can Dillon is suddenly handing to him. It’s a revelation when it cracks open and the beer is fizzing out, over his fingers, he watches it fall and wonders at what’s filling his chest. 

They’re in the kitchen. Dillon’s talking to someone, words a stuttering mess, too fast. Porter doesn’t try to make them out, watches his mouth move and feels beer slipping down his wrist. It’s good, so good in some undefinable way. 

He sips and the cold spreads through him and then Dillon’s pulling him along again. He only registers he’s set his beer down somewhere in the kitchen when they’re already in the hall, heading deeper into the house, brushing past people as they go. 

He feels himself swaying after every one, the impulse for more, more touch, more of the sparking impossibility of skin on his. 

Dillon’s hand shifts in his and he’s still moving. 

They fall into a living room and it’s such a strange, dizzying sense of déjà vu. There’s been living rooms just like this, times when Dillon’s hands had found his waist like they’re doing now. He sways with it on instinct, lets Dillon’s hand slip up under his shirt, hums at how Dillon’s fingers feel like they’re slipping through his skin and ghosting through his whole body. 

He lifts an absent hand as the music swells, catches Dillon by the hair and holds on. Dillon makes a quiet noise, breathy and warm. 

They sway for some time Porter can’t find a reference for, Dillon’s hands wandering his hips and stomach, running over him and he shakes with it. 

He pulls away at last, turns dizzily because he wants Dillon’s mouth, he wants to kiss him, he thinks it’d feel so good and-

“Fuck!” 

It’s the shout that surprises him more than the sudden rush of cold and wet and a little sound escapes him. The tremble pours through him so fast the gasp slips through his teeth, he can’t stop it and it doesn’t really matter, just like understanding doesn’t matter but everything smells like beer and he tilts his head up loosely to look.

The man who’d just spilled his drink turns and he’s frowning and it makes something anxious flutter in Porter’s gut for the first time since the high had blossomed up in him slow and glowing. The man isn’t tall but he’s built for power and Porter stares at him and abstractly thinks something about marble. He’s pale like it, expression carved stone, his eyes flint when they flicker up to Porter’s. 

“Sorry,” Porter manages, reaches up to touch his cheeks where the smile won’t stop, even with the half-formed fear in his stomach. 

“What the fuck is your problem?” the man demands and Porter stares at him and tries to understand but then Dillon is at his back again, a hot weight pressing against the dull cold of his shirt and Porter’s head tips back against him involuntarily. 

“Hey,” Dillon says and it’s the voice Porter recognizes, he can hear it in his head, I can introduce you, we’re all kinds of close. Best friends. 

It’s the voice he wears for Anton. 

“Fucking watch yourself,” the man says at last, turns away. The room is moving with him, swaying with him as he ducks into the crowd. Porter looks down at the carpet and tries to swallow down the animal thing crawling up in his lungs. The anxiety is worse now with something to compare it to, now that he’s tasted the soft ease of the high the contrast is jarring and dizzying and -

Dillon’s hand finds his and he sighs and what had been building in him is gone. It’s nothing to the twine of their fingers, the brush of skin opening him up until the trembling is feverish, until he aches to pull Dillon closer. His shirt is still drenched. 

“Fucking asshole,” Dillon mumbles. Porter lifts his head to look at him. 

He’s staring after the man and then turning to look back and his face is nothing like Porter remembers it. It’s new, soft lit. Porter’s palms itch to cup his cheeks. 

His fingers brush Dillon’s jaw, the noise spilling from Dillon’s mouth so sweet Porter can taste it. His eyes are locked to Porter’s and it’s impossible to look away, impossible to stop his hands from wandering Dillon’s throat and jaw and cheeks. Dillon’s beard brushes his fingertips and he discovers absently he’s still shaking, still so cold. 

“Let’s get you home,” Dillon says. “Get you clean.” 

There’s something about that sentence that makes Porter want to laugh but the thought is gone as soon as it comes. He sighs instead and the air shudders in his lungs, exaltant. 

“Yeah,” he says a moment later. His jaw is tense, trembling. Teeth chattering and it breaks his voice into something barely intelligible.

A moment later Dillon’s fingers are there, gentle pressure at the hinge of his jaw and the tension relents a little. Porter blinks up at him. Dillon leans in and his cheek touches Porter’s, beard brushing skin, and he doesn’t hold in this moan. It’s thin and soft, obscenely private. 

Dillon’s lips part and Porter’s leaning up, their mouths are pressing together and it’s something overflowing. A hand catches in his hair and he moans again and nothing has ever felt so good, he didn’t know anything could feel like this. 

The night air tugs on his skin, the motion of Dillon’s arm around him guiding him down the sidewalk. It’s dizzying, impossible to grasp, the streetlights sublime and haloed. Dillon’s mouth catches him again, pressed into the doorway of his building. 

Tanner’s still up, Porter registers in a blur as Dillon’s hands guide him down the hallway. He almost wants to protest for a moment, he can walk, he’s fine and suddenly he wants to say hi to Tanner - but then Dillon’s hand is straying under his shirt and curling around his hip and he swallows back a moan instead. 

Tanner laughs but they’re already gone, rattling through Dillon’s door, tripping over laundry, Dillon won’t let go of him and Porter doesn’t want him to. The door is shut more by accident than intent and then the room is quiet and lit dimly through the window and the crack of light under the door. They’ve broken apart at last and it takes Porter a beat to remember his body is _his_. 

He wants to say something but the words evaporate in his mouth. Dillon watches for a moment longer and then reaches for him. Porter goes, sways into him thankfully. 

Dillon sets him on the edge of the bed, pulls his wet shirt over his head with stoned fluidity. Porter shakes for a moment, fleetingly too cold and then Dillon’s tipping him onto his back, leaning in over him and pressing a sweet kiss to his mouth. It’s soft, the brush of teeth and then a flicker of hot tongue and Dillon’s mouth is gone and Porter’s shaking still but it feels so good now. Everything feels so good. 

Hot palms catch his hips and Dillon’s mouth is at his throat, pressing more soft kisses to the skin there. He’s sticky, stinks of beer and sweat and he can’t taste good. Dillon doesn’t seem to notice, licks his way down to Porter’s collarbone and bites there gently until Porter feels like his shaking is never going to stop, little whimpering noises spilling from his mouth that he can’t control and doesn’t want to.

“S’this okay?” Dillon pulls away for just a moment to ask and Porter sighs out a breathy moan, nods and gets a hand in Dillon’s hair. Everything is so much more than okay. Everything is beautiful, he feels like he’s overflowing his body and Dillon’s hands and mouth are the only thing keeping him together.

Dillon’s hands find his fly, are working Porter’s jeans down his hips a moment later. They’re not as wet, had escaped the worst of the beer shower, but Dillon eases them off carefully anyway. It makes Porter want to cry, how careful Dillon is being with him. He wants to do the same but he can barely find his hands to make them move in Dillon’s hair and when Dillon smiles up at him it’s heartbreakingly genuine, dark-eyed and sweet and pleased.

Porter’s barely hard and for a moment that bothers him, a spike of distant unease, but Dillon doesn’t seem to notice. He just noses at the base of Porter’s dick for a moment, eyelashes dark crescents against his cheeks, hair a loose disarray of the careful style it’d been at the start of the night. He’s beautiful, Porter realizes dizzily, the disquiet flying apart and scattering away.

Dillon turns to bite gently at his thigh and Porter whines. He’s shaking again, a fine tremble running all through him that feels so good, makes him tilt his head back and gasp for air because it’s suddenly so hard to breathe.

“Please,” he sighs and his voice comes out soft and throaty and Dillon hums back at him, something harmonious and beautiful.

Porter’s about to echo it when Dillon’s tongue finds his cock and he’s moaning instead. Rapturous, pleasure in an impossible cascade behind his eyes, he thinks he’s pulling Dillon’s hair but he can’t force his fingers to let go. He wants more and he thinks distantly that maybe he’d managed to tell Dillon so because suddenly Dillon’s sucking Porter’s cock into his mouth and he cries out.

It’s desperately, transcendentally good and for a time he doesn’t have a frame for all he can do is reach for the scattered parts of himself, cling to Dillon’s hair and buck weakly against his hands holding Porter’s hips down. His cheeks are wet and he thinks he might be crying, thinks it’s probably because this is so good it’s breaking his heart.

He needs more even though he doesn’t know what more is.

He fights through the haze to find his hands, his mouth. To tug on Dillon’s hair until Porter’s cock - he’s still not hard but it seems like it couldn’t possibly matter - slips from his mouth and he looks up at him. A cold wash goes through Porter’s stomach, bereft and wanting, before Dillon’s hands smooth down his hips to grip his thighs and the cold is gone like it’d never been.

“More,” Porter says and tugs gently on Dillon’s hair.

Dillon tilts his head and smiles. His mouth is wet, red and wrecked from Porter’s dick and he licks his lips lazily. He’s watching Porter with half-lidded eyes, dark and hazy and hot.

“Pretty Porter,” he hums and dips back down to tongue at the head of Porter’s cock. Porter feels his back arch, feels his muscles flexing like he’s removed, like every action is liquid and golden. It’s so good, it’s _so_ good. He thinks he’s making noise again; someone’s moaning, hot little noises that echo.

Dillon’s hands lift his legs, pushing them farther apart, spreading him out even more. Porter lets him, tries to help and sobs when it thrusts his cock deeper into Dillon’s mouth. It’s so hot, so wet, it feels like the sensation is sinking through his skin and he can’t stop himself from trying to thrust again. It’s hard, there’s no leverage, but the bare inch he manages to rock in and out is worth it.

Dillon hums and Porter lifts a numb hand to palm at his wet cheeks because he’s crying, he is, everything’s spilling over and it’s so, so good.

A moment later Dillon’s pulling off and Porter pulls in a breath that feels like the only one he’s ever taken, cold and shocking relief. And then he’s being lifted even more, legs pushed back and Dillon’s hands spreading him open and he arches his back at the vulnerability of the position. It feels good in searing waves.

He jolts.

For the longest time he doesn’t know what could possibly be happening and then it registers that Dillon’s tongue is lapping against his hole, warm and wet. It’s electric, shocking, his back arches and he doesn’t know if it’s to try to get away from how impossibly good it feels or to try to press further against it. It’s so good, he wants more and _more_.

“Please,” he manages and then his words dissolve into moans. He can feel his body jerking, straining against Dillon’s hands holding him up and in place. It’s sliding into too much, bursts of light and heat behind his eyes he just can’t process, but he still wants more. Wants everything, wants Dillon to press into him and fill him up and tip him over the edge.

“Gonna take care of you,” Dillon pulls back to mumble, his voice buzzing again Porter’s thigh. He sobs in answer. “Make you feel so good, fuck, _fuck_.”

“Dillon,” he chokes out and then Dillon’s tongue is back on him, hot and pressing against him, into him. It’s nothing like anything he’s ever felt before and he keens, tries to form words and fails abjectly. He can’t make his hands unclench from the blankets, can’t stop his body from jerking and pressing back against Dillon’s mouth. It’s beyond his control, rapture echoing into him and he sobs with it.

A moment later there’s blunt pressure against his hole and he wails, feels himself give and Dillon begin to press in. It’s just the tip of a finger, thick and dry, but it feels like so much to fit inside him. He can’t breathe with it, he needs it more than he’s needed anything.

He can’t breathe. He’s pulling in breath after breath but none of it is coming through, there’s no oxygen in the room.

“Dillon,” he chokes out again and Dillon’s hand withdraws, he licks one last time and then he’s kneeling back up. He’s so huge leaning over him, all Porter can see or hear. He can taste him in the air, can taste them both. Salt and arousal and musk and transcendent, desperate pleasure.

It’s too much and the bolt of skittering anxiety goes through him again, a rush of tremors and then he’s turning his head away. He wants it and he doesn’t, he want to say _yes_ , he wants more and more pleasure and to be full of Dillon, to have his finger back, he wants everything. 

But it’s so much, even so far away and with stars where his heart had been he’s scared. He wants to say something. He wants to explain to Dillon that he’s never been here before. Never done anything like this. That maybe he wants to stop. 

Dillon makes an inquisitive noise. His eyes are bright and hot and hazy on Porter when he looks back up. He’s waiting. 

“I’ve never,” Porter whispers finally, reluctantly. His voice comes out thready, stretched and slurred, and for a moment that same current of disquiet and anxiety rolls through him again.

“Shit,” Dillon says and it sounds alien, distorted like Porter’s voice had. A moment later he’s pulling back, recoiling, hands coming up to his mouth. 

His knuckles are white.

He’s fucked up, he’s really fucked up and Dillon’s staring at him with an expression he’s too high to read and he doesn’t know what to do.

It takes him a moment to fight through and find himself again, he keeps slipping out of touch with his body in the panic and chimerical flood of possibilities. Every dizzying thing that could go wrong, every way that he’s ruined this, _he’d fucked up so badly_ -

The tears spill over, hot and bitter, and suddenly Dillon is there again. Hovering over him, gentle hands landing on his cheeks, thumbs wiping at the tears. It feels so good and Porter shudders, reaches out for him. Dillon lets him, lets himself be pulled in.

He holds Porter and it's so warm. The shakes fade away again and eventually the tears slow, Dillon's hand stroking through his hair becomes tired pleasure. Porter thinks he's probably coming down, maybe.

He doesn't know.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly and Dillon's hand tightens in his hair for a moment.

“You didn't do anything wrong,” Dillon tells him.

“I did,” Porter insists numbly, and then Dillon’s warm palm is cupping his cheek and his head is being tilted back to meet Dillon’s eyes. His eyes are red-rimmed, he’s so pale, but there’s no anger in his face when Porter hazily searches for it. He looks… sad.

“It’s okay,” Dillon says softly and Porter closes his eyes.

For a long time it’s just Dillon’s hands on him, moving slow and rhythmic and soothing. The anxiety drains away, exhaustion and a sort of empty distraction replacing it. Dillon twitches when Porter tightens his hands a little.

“We should… take a bath,” Dillon mumbles in his ear. Porter nods.

He sits on the bathroom floor as Dillon runs the bath, pulls his knees up to his chest and tries to hold himself together through the shakes. It’s starting to ache, a thick cloudy pulse in his skull and sharp lightning in his limbs.

He watches Dillon move, watches him sluggishly turn off the tap and test the water with a limp hand. Watches him step out of his underwear, watches the hand Dillon extends in his direction. Watches himself take it and be lifted to his feet, held until he can balance.

“In,” Dillon murmurs and Porter tilts his head up, brushes their mouths together. It’s damp skin, the faint tang of blood, something salt and musk that Porter realizes as Dillon pushes him gently towards the bath is himself.

He climbs in. Water sloshes out, then more as Dillon steps in clumsily.

For a moment they hover facing each other and Porter still can’t read Dillon’s expression, everything is moving like a strobe. Fast impressions; a flash of the water closing over his hand. A moment of Dillon blinking. Porter’s foot slipping against the slick plastic of the tub and nudging against Dillon’s leg.

Dillon reaches out and pushes damp hair out of Porter’s eyes with a wet hand. It’s cautious. It’s grounding. Porter leans into it and Dillon breathes out and Porter realizes it’s the first breath he’s seen Dillon taking the whole time.

“I’m sorry,” Dillon says and Porter blinks at him slowly for a long moment. He doesn’t really understand.

Eventually Dillon hauls in another breath, his hand slipping down to cup Porter’s cheek.

“C’mere,” he mumbles and urges Porter forward, until Porter has to throw his legs over Dillon’s. They’re close enough Porter can track droplets running through Dillon’s beard, the shake of damp strands when Dillon moves his head. The flutter of Dillon’s pupils, contracting and dilating, still so wide and dark.

It takes him a moment to realize Dillon’s hands are running over him, dipping to scoop up soap suds and then lathering on Porter’s shoulders and smoothing them away again. He jolts when Dillon’s hands move to his hair and Dillon freezes until Porter nudges against him exhausted, makes a soft noise that might have been words, somewhere.

“Please,” he manages after a second and Dillon’s hands start moving again, catching in his wet hair, pulling gently against the sticky tangles. He still stinks of beer, Porter can smell it in the air, but it’s fading under the flowery smell of whatever soap Dillon had used. It’s good, it feels like he’s sliding back into his body and it aches but the blind euphoria is slipping out from under his skin and it’s relieving.

Eventually Dillon’s fingers are just running through his hair, no tangles left. He jumps when Porter pulls away.

He’s flushed from the heat, skin pink, face sleepy and distant. Porter stares at him and then gathers himself up, pulls his legs out of Dillon’s lap and pulls them under him. It’s hard, he’s still so far from himself and his muscles don’t want to work, nothing wants to work. It aches, but he can breathe through it and now he’s crouching over Dillon and it’s… it’s good.

Dillon’s skin is slick under his hands and he crawls forward awkwardly through sloshing water, gets in between his legs and pauses there. He’s being watched through half-lidded eyes, dark and interested and sleepy. It feels like a touch on his skin and he shivers tiredly. There’s anxiety biting into his lungs but it seems far away and unimportant and when Dillon lifts a wet hand to cup his hip and draw him forward it quiets.

Dillon’s hot from the water, the welcoming cradle of his body burning against Porter’s skin. It’s obscene, delicious, he moans when Dillon’s arm comes around his waist. Dillon’s cock is fat with interest but far from hard and Porter can’t even feel himself to tell if he’s anything at all but it still feels so good and the noise Dillon breathes out when Porter carefully moves to straddle him is delicious.

“You’re so pretty,” Dillon mumbles and Porter makes a noise that’s probably supposed to be a protest but sounds more like soft pleasure. He turns his head, kisses Dillon with a sort of slow desperation that’s foreign to him but still feels so good.

They kiss for what feels like forever but can’t be more than an hour, Dillon’s hands finding the back of his neck and skating down his back, pressing lazy fingers over the curve of his ass and the dip of his waist. Porter can’t stop his own hands from wandering, cupping Dillon’s soft dick again and again, feeling the flex of Dillon’s stomach and the play of muscles in his shoulders.

He’s not sure when but Dillon starts shaking, a trembling motion that when Porter notices makes him realize his own shakes have died down. Now he just feels heavy, tired, sleepy and needy. He keeps his lips on Dillon’s because he needs the anchor, because Dillon is safe and good and feels so good surrounding him.

Dillon breaks away eventually, turns his head to breathe against Porter’s shoulder. The water is lukewarm around them and Porter wants to say something but there are no words.

“Stay the night,” Dillon murmurs against his skin. His shaking has mostly died down but his fingers are tight against Porter’s back. Porter doesn’t mention that the sun is probably already pushing up over the horizon. “Just, y’know, to sleep.”

Porter waits for the anxiety to surge but nothing comes. He’s just tired. He wants to sleep, wants Dillon there, doesn’t want to dream anymore. It’s an easy answer.

“Wasn’t gonna leave,” he mumbles.


	5. running - moderat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to M for betaing this! 
> 
> enjoy xoxo

Porter doesn’t sleep. 

He dozes, slips in and out of reality, back and forth from frenetic dream to the stillness of Dillon’s room. Restless, but he holds himself still. He doesn’t think Dillon’s asleep either but he doesn’t speak and Porter wants to scream. He wants Dillon to break the silence because it suffocates him, pulling him inside out by the lungs. 

In some of the dreams Dillon does speak. The words burn in Porter’s ear, reassurances or accusations, impossible to shake in the moment after he wakes. Every time he thinks he has something to answer with but then the silence presses back into his mouth. 

He wakes from a dream - Dillon whispering in his ear that Porter should leave, just go. 

The room is still silent. 

A car passes in the street. The sun is starting to press against Dillon’s curtains but it’s only a dim red glow by the time it makes it through. He thinks Dillon’s asleep again. The breath against the back of his neck is even and slow. 

“I’m sorry,” Porter breathes. The clock blinks seven in the morning at him. 

Dillon’s arm tightens around him. 

Neither of them say anything else.

-O-

Making coffee in Dillon’s kitchen is unpleasantly easy now. The steps a worn routine, almost thoughtless.

Porter loads the grounds, pours the water in the reservoir. He takes two mugs out of the cabinet and the sugar is on the counter, the fridge hanging open for the milk. Dillon leans against the island counter and watches him do it. 

Dillon’s hands are shaking, Porter notes absently as he pours milk into both mugs. 

The coffee percolates with grinding slowness, the only noise in the silent apartment. There’s nothing coming from Tanner’s room and it occurs to Porter to wonder if he’d heard them last night. He can remember being _loud_ , his cries echoing back to him off the walls, but it’s a filmy memory that shreds when he tries to grasp it more firmly. 

He pours coffee into the mugs, adds sugar and cream to his, just cream to Dillon’s. Dillon takes it and cradles it in his hands. 

“I’m sorry,” he says at last and Porter jolts. His voice is so hoarse. 

“You didn’t do anything,” he manages and Dillon looks up at him. 

He looks so infinitely tired. Bags under his eyes, hair a stiff rumple. He’s drawn into himself in a way Porter’s never seen, tight and close. Dillon’s hands still shake as he clutches his mug. The coffee sloshes quietly. It’s the loudest thing in the apartment. 

“What are we doing?” Porter asks and it isn’t what he’d meant to say. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all but the words slip from his tongue and he can’t haul them back, can’t claw them from the crack they make in the ringing silence between them. Dillon doesn’t move for a moment and then he blinks slowly. 

“You remind me of Anton sometimes,” Dillon says. 

He's watching Porter quietly and it’s so impossible to say what's behind his eyes. They're passive, opaque and waiting. Infuriating, so infuriating, and for a ridiculous moment Porter wants to scream because fucking _actors_. 

“What does that mean?” Porter asks. It’s hard to keep his voice from wavering. 

Dillon smiles, a sideways quirk. 

“I liked him too much too,” he says and it’s quiet, bitter. Not quite directed at Porter before the smile fades and his eyes are dark and tired on Porter again. “You want to know... what happened with Anton.” 

Porter nods. Lifts his cup to his lips for something to do. 

Dillon sighs, runs trembling fingers through his hair. It stands on end and Porter thinks this is probably the most honestly disheveled he’s ever seen Dillon be. He still makes Porter’s breath catch in his throat. 

“Anton was – is – my best friend,” Dillon finally begins. Porter takes a sip of his coffee and watches him quietly. “We met at a casting thing, it was… he’s really great. Genuine, y’know. Nicest person ever.” 

Dillon doesn’t go on for a long time. He stares down at the mug in his hands and Porter’s about to prompt him to go on when he finally shakes himself. 

“He’s really beautiful, you’ve seen,” Dillon says and he finally looks at Porter. “It was… It’s hard not to get fucked up about that. I didn’t even try.” 

“What happened?” Porter asks softly even though he’s pretty sure he knows. Pretty sure he’s known for a while. 

Dillon shrugs and a twisted little half-smile crosses his face that’s nothing close to happy. 

“Didn’t work out. It fucked me up for a while.” He pauses again, takes a sip of coffee. “He’s straight.” 

“I’m not Anton,” Porter says. 

Dillon's expression flickers, just a momentary twist Porter doesn't know how to read. 

“True,” he says. He doesn’t continue but he’s staring at Porter now, face something Porter can only read in part. Certainly fear, in some way. Surprise, maybe. The rest is too opaque, too complicated. There’s heat rising in Porter’s cheeks, nerves and embarrassment, he hates this but he wants it too much to let go. 

“I’m not straight,” he tries again. 

He sees the moment realization dawns in Dillon, sees it in the way that Dillon’s whole face shutters. Suddenly his face is so blank. 

“What are you saying?” Dillon asks quietly. 

Porter's hand tightens on his mug and then he sets it down carefully on the counter with an noise that echoes. He can feel the shakes trying to overtake him, the nerves and terror and comedown anxiety. He wants so badly to avoid the question because he can't... 

“I want to try to make this work,” he forces through numb lips. “If you wanted, I do.”

Dillon breathes out and Porter hadn’t noticed how still he’d gone until the shakes resume, hunched shoulders and soft trembles, knuckles white around the mug. He looks smaller, nervous, a little bit ashamed. 

He laughs. It's a sound Porter wants to wipe off his mouth. 

“You're too good for me, y'know that?” Dillon says quietly and it sounds abstract, rhetorical like he isn't expecting an answer or even cares if Porter hears it. His eyes sharpen on Porter a moment later. 

“You're an idiot,” Porter says without thinking and then winces. Dillon doesn't flinch, just looks at him for another long time. 

“I know,” he says at last and shrugs. “I don't... wanna be, anymore.” 

Porter takes a step forward and Dillon's hand comes up to cup his hip. A moment of tension, frozen and shaken and Porter thinks he knows what Dillon means, cautious hope rising in his chest. He waits, stares up and Dillon bends forward and for a second he’s certain that Dillon's about to kiss him.

Dillon’s forehead lands on his shoulder. 

“Wanna go back to bed?” Porter asks after a beat of silence, sheepish. 

Dillon laughs, nods.

-O-

The room is dim and the sun is still barely fighting through the curtains. Porter watches it for a moment as Dillon straightens mussed sheets, fusses over the pillows. It takes him so long to realize what it is, that Dillon’s _nervous_ again. Exhaustion is pulling Porter down and down into something softer than he’s used to, dark and warm. He’s slow with it, thoughts coming glacial and syrupy.

When he reaches out to brush fingertips against Dillon’s hip he jumps, spins to Porter and he looks… lost. 

Porter nudges him towards the bed and it’s still so shocking he can’t believe it, to be the one in charge. The one that knows what he’s doing. It would feel good if it didn’t come at the expense of Dillon’s skittering movements. 

He fidgets when Porter pushes him down on the bed, doesn’t strip out of his jeans until Porter’s are already on the floor. His gaze follows Porter around the room, careful. He reaches out for Porter with ease when they’ve found their way under the blankets, though. Pulls Porter to him like he already knows it’s what Porter wants. 

Tucked together in the dimness of his room, blankets pulled over them both, legs tangled together and Porter’s nose pressed to Dillon’s shirt it feels safe, like a haven. Porter can breathe. Everything smells like Dillon and it’s comforting. After a moment he tilts his head up to see if Dillon’s asleep yet. He feels like he’s halfway there already, trancelike, dreamy. 

The hand cups his cheek, guides their foreheads together. It’s warm, so close, the air scented with both of them. They breathe together, falling into it so naturally, a soft in-out that feels like it’s filling Porter in a way air has never done before. 

He tilts his head first. Presses their mouths together. 

It’s soft. So warm, and tastes of coffee. He kisses Dillon for a long time.

-O-

His apartment is cold and empty and when he steps through the door he catches the smell of old, wet, rotting vegetation.

His bag thumps to the floor and he heads to the kitchenette instead of dealing with it, pours himself a cup of hot water and reaches for the instant coffee. It mixes in slowly and he stirs mindlessly, watches the water deepen into brown, steam rising to kiss his cheeks. 

He breathes in deep and the scent is gone in a wash of chemical caffeine and he isn’t sure if it’s because he’s gotten used to it so quickly or if it had all been his imagination.

-O-

Porter gets the text halfway through his shift, breaking the haze of exhaustion and apathy and pressing paranoia that still, _still_ hasn’t abated. It’s lessened, or maybe he’s just getting used to it. The anxiety is everywhere now. He spends more nights with Dillon than not, the only way he can sleep.

He just… hates going home. Hates being alone. 

_U should come over tonight,_ Dillon’s sent and Porter blinks at it blearily for a moment. 

_what for?_ he replies and tucks his phone to the side as someone comes in. He’s hanging back and Porter smiles at him, watches carefully as he slides over to the rack of candy bars. He looks like a kid, can’t even be 18. 

His phone chimes and he slides it out of his pocket to look. 

_I can’t just wanna see my bf??? Cold, bitch_ , Dillon’s replied and Porter hides his giddy smile in his hand, glances back up at the kid skulking towards the beer freezer to give himself a moment to calm his heartbeat. 

“You don’t wanna make me check your ID,” he calls over and the kid freezes guiltily, glances back at him and then shrugs and moves for the door. He’s flushing and Porter almost feels a little bad until his phone chimes at him again and the door swishes closed behind the kid. 

_I made dinner_ , Dillon’s sent and Porter feels his cheeks heat, ducks his head and scrubs at them with a hand even though there’s no one to see it. His stomach is flipping suddenly and it feels so good, it feels like he can’t force the smile off his face anymore. 

_yeah okay, i’ll be over after work_ , he texts back and glances at the clock.

-O-

The bus is warmer than he’s used to and he leans against the window and lets the gentle vibration of the engine lull him a little. It’s late because it always is when he gets off shift but it’s still light out. The sun is setting over the water and Porter can’t see it but he can feel the warmth of the last rays on his skin, the heat of pavement radiating back to him when he gets off the bus.

He knows the stop by instinct now. He’s never late pulling the cord. 

Dillon meets him at the door and he’s bouncing in place, his smile almost too big for his face. Porter stares at him for a moment and then Dillon’s reaching out for him, guiding him inside with gentle hands, and Porter still isn’t quite used to that. To the way Dillon suddenly touches him all the time. 

He loves that he’s getting used to it. 

“So,” Dillon says, and he’s pulling Porter into the kitchen and he’s pretty sure there’s more Dillon wants to say but then Porter sees what’s in the kitchen. 

For a moment all that registers is the flickering light of candles and his first inane thought is that it’s a fire hazard. And then the rest registers, the blanket spread on the ground, the bottle of wine, the little tupperware containers. Dillon’s face, the flush he’s not hiding well enough, the careful way he’s watching Porter for his reaction. 

He’s wearing a nice jacket over his jeans. It looks ridiculous. 

“Dillon,” he says softly and Dillon bites his lip, shuffles in place for a moment. 

It’s the most nervous he thinks he’s ever seen Dillon and it doesn’t really surprise him, the way he jolts when Porter reaches up to cup his cheeks and draw him down to kiss him. His hands go around Porter’s waist and they’re pressed together, chest to chest, he can feel the breath Dillon takes pressing their ribs together. 

Dillon’s mouth is so soft, his beard scratching Porter’s cheeks, and for a moment he just revels in the fact that he _can_ kiss Dillon. That this is his now. That he can have it. 

“Is this a _date_ ,” he taunts when he pulls away. He doesn’t go far. Dillon huffs a laugh a moment later, soft against Porter’s cheek. His mouth brushes across Porter’s cheekbone, soft lips trailing over to his ear and moving there for a moment. It makes him shiver, he wants to dig his fingers in, beg Dillon to bite down.

He doesn’t, just breathes out shakily and stands a moment more in the circle of Dillon’s arms, leans into his warm bulk and marvels at how safe he feels.

“Yeah, it’s a date,” Dillon mutters against his ear and he sounds so guilty about it Porter has to laugh, turns his head to look at the spread.

It’s containers from Dillon’s job, a dish of olives, a whole loaf of French bread. Some cheese, spread out in a slightly clumsy little fan. And the bottle of wine, it looks expensive and he has to smile helplessly, he doesn’t know what to _do_ with this impossible surge of affection.

“I love it,” he confides against Dillon’s collarbone. A hand finds his hair and presses him there for a moment, sweet and caressing, and then Dillon’s stepping away a little and gesturing across the spread with cartoonish gallantry.

“I picked up a bunch of leftovers from work,” he declares and settles cross-legged. Porter sits next to him, knees pressed together. “We can pretend to be rich for a while.”

Porter laughs and reaches out to pluck an olive from the bowl, turns it over delicately in his hands and then pops it in his mouth. The flavor makes his nose wrinkle as it spreads across his tongue.

He doesn’t even have to say anything and Dillon’s offering him a napkin to spit it out in. He’s laughing, hard and deep from the belly, enough to shake his frame and bend him in half, to pull his face into a mess of laugh lines. Porter ducks his head a little, watches the candlelight on Dillon’s face and wonders at how lucky he is.

“Jesus,” Dillon mumbles as he throws the napkin haphazardly towards the trash. He’s a little breathless. Porter wants to kiss him even though the salt brine of the olive is still acerbic on his tongue. “Why did you eat it then?”

He’s still smiling when Porter reaches out and gets a hand in his hair, guides him down to kiss again. It’s messy, an uneven kiss that makes Porter’s heart speed anyway. He can’t believe how happy he is. It’s almost terrifying how right it feels, how Dillon fits to him so readily, how easy it is to fall and fall and fall. 

“Shut up,” he murmurs against Dillon’s mouth and thrills at the little breath Dillon takes against his lips. “I wanted to know if I still hated them.”

-O-

Porter hasn’t slept in something approaching thirty hours when Dillon calls him. It’s something almost like late enough for normal people to be awake.

The dreams are always there. They really aren’t even nightmares. It’s just exhausting to know what’s waiting behind his eyes when he finally lets them close. It’s just that the dreams don’t leave him when he wakes. They follow him for hours, bleeding into reality in a way that makes the cotton-mouth sickness of sleep deprivation so infinitely preferably. 

The room is awash in cool grey morning light and that makes it easier. It’s easier in the daytime, when the sun is out and he can see better and the urge to sleep retreats ever so slightly. He stares at the buzz of his phone, the light of the screen, and thinks about making a pot of coffee. 

He answers even though his fingers feel thick and numb and clumsy. 

Dillon’s at work, Porter realizes before Dillon’s greeting has filtered through the haze. There are dishes banging in the background and someone’s yelling about menus. 

“Hey,” he manages belatedly. “Good morning, hey.” 

Dillon’s quiet for a moment. 

“Did you sleep?” he asks at last and he’s speaking loudly, fighting the background din, but his tone is gentle. Porter blinks slowly and the smile tugs exhaustedly at the corner of his mouth. He feels a little bit better, hearing his voice. 

He sleeps better with Dillon than on his own. The dreams are easier to push away when Dillon is there like sun on the surface of the water, striking through, making reality so much more _real_. 

“No,” he says and rubs at his eye sluggishly. His head aches, faint and pervasive. 

Dillon makes a disgruntled noise and then the noise is cutting abruptly with the sound of doors swinging shut. Suddenly it’s like they’re alone together and Porter closes his eyes, opens them again. He wants to reach out and brush his fingertips over the texture of the wall but it seems like so much effort. 

“Are you working tonight?” Dillon asks and Porter hauls in a breath, squints at the wall until the pattern sharpens into focus and tries to think. 

“Nah,” he says at last. “Not for a few days.” 

Dillon makes a pleased noise and there’s the sound of silverware clinking. It occurs to Porter to wonder if Dillon should be calling him at work. 

“Sonny wants to have a beach day while the weather’s still good,” Dillon says before Porter can work out the words to ask about it. “Stay the night at mine and come with us?” 

The sun reflects stinging and sharp off the corroded metal of the Chinese takeout sign across the street. Porter turns over to avoid it, rubs his cheek against the pillow and wishes the ache behind his eyes would stop. 

“Sounds really nice,” Porter says when the pain doesn’t abate. He’s having difficulty tracking the words coming out of his mouth but he does want it. He wants to sleep. “When do you get off work?” 

“Four,” Dillon says and then there’s a crash and a soft curse and Porter’s laughing despite himself. “Come over at five? Fuck, I gotta go, I just spilled all the silverware in the fucking world.” 

“See you,” Porter says and then Dillon’s gone.

-O-

He’s slept two hours, snatched in the time before the sun rose high enough in the sky to make sleep impossible. He feels heavy with it, headachey and slow. It’s unpleasant to move through but he packs some clothes into his backpack anyway. Throws his toothbrush on top of that and barely remembers to grab his swimming shorts.

He locks his door behind him and it feels almost pointless. He doesn’t feel any safer knowing the door is locked. 

He doesn’t know what he’s so scared of. 

He walks to the bus stop through golden, roaring afternoon heat and something prickles between his shoulderblades. Someone’s eyes are on him, he knows with a certainty that feels like a religious truth. He ignores it, closes his eyes and leans against the pole until the sound of the bus engine shakes him from thoughtless drowsing. 

Dillon lets him into the apartment and guides him directly to bed, a brief wave to Tanner on the couch and then tucked into blankets warm with the leftover summer heat. He breathes in and it feels like the whole of his body goes limp when he breathes out. 

“I’ll make food,” Dillon murmurs and leans down to press gentle lips to Porter’s temple. “Sleep if you wanna, I’ll be back in a bit.” 

Porter nods and his eyes close and when he opens them again the light in the room has shifted. The glow between Dillon’s curtains is cool now, the cold fluoresce of streetlights. 

Dillon’s tucked against his back and he’s breathing slowly, almost a snore. He puts out so much heat Porter’s almost stifling in it. He settles back into Dillon’s hold anyway, breathes out and lets his eyes close again.

-O-

The morning comes and Porter’s groggy with it, slow with the weight of the sleep he’s not used to. He clutches his mug of coffee and watches Dillon drift from the stove to the refrigerator and back, cracking eggs in the skillet, throwing things into it in a pattern Porter’s too tired to fathom into a recipe. He stops every now and then to duck in for a kiss but he doesn’t talk and Porter’s thankful.

He eats more than he expects to, picks his way through the plate Dillon hands him. Dillon’s leaning against him at the counter, weight that feels like it’s settling Porter back into his body. It feels good. It feels like relief. 

Halfway through the morning Dillon’s phone rings and he answers it without moving from underneath Porter. They’re drowsing on the couch, something mindless and colorful down low on the television, something Porter hasn’t been paying attention to but watches anyway. The plot’s escaped him. He doesn’t know the character’s names. He watches them move across the screen and that’s enough. 

“Yeah, shit, we’ll be ready,” Dillon says and hangs up. Porter turns his head against Dillon’s chest to look up at him. 

“‘Sup,” he asks. His voice is soft with disuse. 

“They’re driving here,” Dillon says and then snorts, arm around Porter’s waist tightening. “So they’ll be here when they load up and get through traffic. We have like an hour or two.” 

Porter laughs, hoarse and breathless, and shifts around to face him. Presses his mouth to Dillon’s, kisses him breathless and laughing. Grips Dillon’s waist and relishes Dillon’s hands finding his hips in turn.

-O-

The next call interrupts kisses turned so slow and deep and heated Porter’s panting when they break apart, breathing like he’s just run a marathon. His skin feels too tight in the best way, arousal bolting through him hard and hot. He _wants_.

Dillon’s phone is buzzing right by his ear, though. Loud and unrelenting until Porter reaches up to slap at it and Dillon retrieves it from under his flailing hand. 

“Shit, they’re here,” he says. His voice is husky. Porter laughs, breathless. 

“Cool,” he says and dips for one last kiss before Dillon’s lifting him bodily up off the couch and they’re stumbling around, grabbing swimsuits and flip-flops and the bottle of rum from the top of Dillon’s fridge. Dillon’s throwing water bottles into their bag when Porter finally returns from pawing through the piles of laundry on Dillon’s floor for the cleanest towels. 

He throws a grin Porter’s way that knocks the wind from him. 

He remembers abruptly the first time he’d seen Dillon. The white falsity of his smile. The tangle of his hair and the flush in his cheeks and the performative, reckless deceit in every move he’d made. He’s different and Porter’s breathless with it, with the sincerity there now. 

Porter hauls in a breath. Dillon hefts their bag and reaches back without looking, waits until Porter takes his hand and they’re through the door and racing down the stairs to the street. 

Sonny’s car is a beat-up old minivan, big enough for twelve people and stuffed full of instruments and notebooks and trash. There’s a plastic alien hanging from the mirror and someone’s sharpied a dick across the back of the driver’s headrest. It’s signed _Adam_ and he grins. 

Mija is pressed against his side and she’d reached out when he’d climbed in, running long nails over his scalp. She shoots him a pleased little smile when Dillon shoves in after him and throws an arm around his shoulder as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

It _feels_ like the most natural thing in the world. 

Adam is driving and he’s shouting along to a song on the radio that Porter recognizes enough to hum along to, sings a bar or two and Dillon dips to press his lips to his ear for a moment. Sonny is in the passenger seat and he’s tapping away at his phone, saying something about people meeting them there. 

It’s good. Mija passes him a beer and he laughs and Dillon smiles against his cheek. 

The drive isn’t long but it stretches like caramel, golden and sweet. He’s tipsy before they get through the traffic to the coast, buzzing, lips numb and smiling. Dillon’s arm is still around him, hasn’t shifted except to hand across the bottle of rum. He keeps laughing in Porter’s ear and he tries to keep himself from turning and pressing his mouth to Dillon’s. 

He fails. 

There are white beaches to their left when he comes up for air, Sonny’s hooting from the front seat and Mija laughing quietly beside him. Waves beat the sand and it’s perfect, the sun is shining from the asphalt of the street and he still can taste Dillon on his lips. Beer, rum, salt air. His hands are steady when he passes the bottle up to Sonny. 

“We’re here,” Adam reports loudly and spins the wheel, careens into the parking lot and throws the parking brake on in one motion. Mija shrieks and a laugh bubbles from Porter’s gut that feels so spontaneous it hurts a little. 

Dillon’s out the door a moment later, whooping in the sunlight, taking off down the parking lot. Mija presses up against his back, urging him out of the car and into the white blast of sunlight. 

The smell of brine pours over him. 

For a moment his heart is beating too fast. He’s back in his dreams, he’s knee-deep in the waves and the cold flows phantom through him despite the heat of the sun a furnace around him. There’s _danger_ here, there’s things beneath the waves and they know he’s there and-

Dillon’s arm comes around him and he jumps, for a moment fighting the instinct to bolt. 

“Alright?” Dillon asks quietly and Porter tilts his head to look up at him. He’s golden in the sunlight, smiling down at him so kindly, and Porter’s absurdly grateful for a moment. 

“Yeah, I’m alright,” he says and leans his head against Dillon’s shoulder for a moment. It’s warm in the sun but Dillon’s body is a different kind of warmth, solid and easy to lean on. 

“Dillon you _fucker_ , come help with this cooler!” Adam calls from the back of the car and Dillon laughs, bends to leave a smacking wet kiss against Porter’s temple and then bounds away, calling back something Porter doesn’t pay attention to. He’s too busy steadying himself on his feet, blinking away the dazzle of sunlight. The ocean is blue and tipped in white, the sand is smooth, the sun is warm above him. 

He’s safe.

-O-

Sonny drops them off at the curb of Dillon’s apartment and Porter’s a little bit tipsy, a little bit sun-drunk. Warm under his skin, almost languid with exhaustion and contentedness. He’s caked in salt and his mouth is soft with dryness, everything tastes of homemade mimosas and Smirnoff Ice.

The sun is going down. It’s fiery, beautiful, lighting up the streets and buildings in burning oranges and yellows and reds. Dillon’s hand lands at his waist and his skin is so hot and Porter sighs, turns into Dillon’s body and rests his temple against his shoulder. 

“Thirsty,” he mumbles and Dillon laughs, waves at Sonny as he drives away. 

“Let’s get inside, drink some water,” he suggests easily and shuffles with Porter up the stairs, through the door to the landing of the elevator. The ride is quiet and Porter leans into Dillon’s side. His skin is tight and hot with sunburn and he doesn’t mind, doesn’t even care. 

There’s sand in his teeth. He tongues at them contentedly. 

Dillon’s languid in opening the apartment door. Everything’s quiet and Porter thinks probably Tanner’s out somewhere or asleep and he’s almost sad for a moment. He likes Tanner, likes that he’s exactly himself in all his disgusting, stoner glory. 

The kitchen is a mess but Dillon pulls down two mismatched coffee mugs and fills them from the tap, hands one across to Porter and leans over to kiss the top of his head. Porter tilts his head up and Dillon kisses him, slow and sweet, contented. 

Eventually Dillon steps away and Porter follows him down the hall, sipping idly at his mug of water. It’s delicious, cold and refreshing, washing the taste of alcohol and sea salt away cleanly. He feels clearer, more present, still hot and languid but now watching Dillon nudge open the door, draining his mug sleepy and inquisitive. 

Dillon shuts the door behind him, yawns, goes to pull the shirt over his head and Porter tightens his grip on his mug. 

He’s never been _unaware_ of Dillon’s body. He knows that he’s strong, works out, has ignored Dillon talking about it more times than he can count. He’s seen it too, brief glimpses as Dillon changed his shirts or lifted his arms or showed off his tattoos. That one blurry, distorted memory of the bath together. Nothing he’d allowed himself to look at long and for a moment he’s sliding his eyes away on instinct. 

Dillon jolts when Porter sets aside his cup and reaches out to touch. 

He holds still though, lets Porter run his palms down his sides, cupping the curves of soft muscle over his hips, sliding back up to press into the firmness of muscles in his stomach. Rub over the peak of a nipple, then tracing the hard line of a collarbone up to cup the back of his neck. 

Dillon’s watching him with dark eyes when he looks up to meet his gaze. His lips are parted and his breath is coming fast and there’s a frozen moment where all Porter can do is look. 

“Jesus,” Porter says and then he’s dropping to his knees. 

Dillon stares down at him with absolute shock. 

Porter stares back and it’s a dizzy moment, this familiar room that smells so much like Dillon, like home. Dillon’s thighs under his hands. The carpet under his knees, the heat of his skin where he’s pretty sure he’s got sunburns. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters. His heart is beating so hard and fast it feels like wings and he _wants_ this. 

He wants Dillon. He wants to suck him off, wants to fuck him, wants to be fucked by him and to give him _everything_. He wants to fall asleep in bed with Dillon and wake up to kisses and morning breath and Dillon making breakfast, making his coffee for him just right. 

“Porter,” Dillon says and his name comes out broken in half. He’s staring and his face is still full of shock. Porter blinks back slowly. 

“Let me,” he whispers at last. He can’t speak any louder. He wants to so badly and when he draws his eyes down Dillon’s body the tent in his pants says that at least in some way Dillon wants it too. 

He leans forward, presses his lips to the rough denim. He can smell Dillon’s cock through the cloth, the sharp bite of the ocean and under it the sweet animal smell of skin and arousal. His mouth is abruptly flooded with saliva, he has to lick his lips and nose in more, chasing the phantom taste. 

Dillon’s hand lands in his hair, not a grip so much as gently guiding his head away. He’s dropping to his knees in front of Porter a moment later, a collapse that rattles the floor a little bit. His eyes are still wide, his hands hesitant when they catch Porter’s cheeks. He’s a little shaky, Porter notices, and a bolt of nerves goes through him. 

He’d thought Dillon had _wanted_ …

“You don’t have to do that,” Dillon says and his voice is still cracking and hoarse. It’s salt, the yelling all day, but not just that. There’s nerves there too and for a long moment Porter doesn’t understand. 

“I don’t want you to think you have to,” Dillon continues when Porter doesn’t say anything, “Just ‘cause we’ve already, y’know, I know you haven’t done that yet and you don’t…” 

Porter leans forward and Dillon’s lips are moving under his for a moment before it becomes kissing back, his hand sliding up to wind in Porter’s hair. It’s soft, Dillon tastes like Smirnoff Ice and salt and sun. 

_He tastes like summer_ , Porter thinks for a brilliant moment and then has to laugh, pulls away with a hand on Dillon’s cheek. Dillon’s still watching him, expression guarded and almost scared. 

“I wanna suck your dick,” he tells Dillon softly and doesn’t miss the soft gasp for breath, stirring the air between them. “I want that.” 

Dillon swallows and it clicks in his throat. It’s so loud between them. 

Porter thinks of how this can’t possibly be Dillon’s first blowjob, can’t be the first time he’s had someone between his legs asking for his cock. Thinks of how important this - _he_ \- must be to Dillon that it’s scaring him so much now. The heat that rises in his cheeks is as much happiness as arousal. 

“Please?” he adds and Dillon nods jerkily, almost like he isn’t aware he’s doing it for a moment before he shakes himself and leans forward, presses another kiss lightning-fast to his mouth. 

“You’re sure?” he asks and Porter nods, can’t bite back the smile. 

“Up,” he says and urges Dillon back to his feet pushily. “I wanna see your dick, let me see it.” 

“The fucking mouth on you,” Dillon says but his tone is a dazed parody of his normal gentle mockery and he’s stumbling to his feet, leaning back against his dresser. His erection is still tenting out his pants and Porter shuffles forward on his knees, reaches out and massages a palm over it. It’s hot under his hand and the way Dillon’s hips twitch like they want to buck into it is gratifying. 

He replaces his hand with his mouth, kisses the bulge chastely and looks up at Dillon through his lashes when he inhales sharply. 

“Your fucking mouth,” Dillon repeats breathlessly and his hand is cupping Porter’s cheek, a thumb pressing softly against Porter’s lower lip. He smiles, giddy with the way Dillon can’t seem to look away from him. His own cock is pressing against his pants, the sweet ache of his hardness accentuating the sudden need to have his mouth filled. 

He reaches up, runs his fingertips down Dillon’s belly until he reaches the trail of hair leading under his waistband, pauses there and just touches for a while. He can see the muscles in Dillon’s stomach jump when he drags a fingernail down, catching on the waistband and then hooking in, tugging just a little bit. 

Dillon’s hands are on his fly a moment later, fumbling to undo his jeans. His fingers are clumsy and Porter hides his grin in Dillon’s thigh. He can hear the jagged edge to Dillon’s breath and it’s so good, affecting him like this. He loves it, loves it so much. 

The zipper comes down loudly and it’s hard for Porter to keep his hands away, to keep them hooked quietly in Dillon’s waistband instead of reaching for the flash of underwear and the jut of Dillon’s cock straining against it. Instead he bites his lip, tries to keep in the impatient noises and lifts his hands when Dillon moves to push it down underwear and all. 

He sucks in a breath when Dillon’s cock springs free, almost misses the tiny noise of relief over his head. It’s sweet and he digs his fingers into Dillon’s thighs, draws in a deep breath and lets go again. 

“You sure?” Dillon asks again and his voice is a little broken and Porter has to smile, tilts his head to look up at him. 

Dillon cries out when Porter kisses the tip of his dick, something muffled in a moment. Porter sucks the head of his cock into his mouth, suckles a little bit and looks up to find Dillon muffling himself with his hand, staring down at Porter with wide eyes. His hand is hovering in the air over Porter’s head, shaking. 

Porter closes his eyes again, tilts his head into Dillon’s grip and bobs a little experimentally. It’s new, startling and somehow impossibly erotic to have Dillon sliding into his mouth so easily, gently fucking his mouth. His lips are already slick with drool, gathering messily at the corners of his mouth and threatening to run down his chin. 

He pulls back for a moment and Dillon makes a sound of loss that goes straight to Porter’s dick, already straining against his zipper and starting to ache. For a moment it’s almost scary, how hard he is from a cock in his mouth. 

“It’s messy,” he says without thinking and Dillon barks out something that could have been a sob or a laugh, his fingers tightening for a brief moment in Porter’s hair. 

“Shit,” Dillon says, still muffled by his hand over his mouth, and then, “Holy _shit_ ,” as Porter takes him back into his mouth, slides down until he can feel himself about to gag and holds himself there for a long moment. It feels _good_ , hovering on the edge of too deep, the strain of taking it pulling tears to his eyes. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing but it feels right, feels instinctive and easy and _right_. Something he loves already, how cock feels so good in his mouth, weighty and hot, velvet-soft and so impossibly hard. It tastes like salt and clean sweat and sex, musk and Dillon, something heady and dizzying and he _loves_ it. 

“God,” Dillon says and it’s almost a whimper. Porter opens wet eyes to look up at him and he’s pink from the sun, hair tousled and a little bit stiff with sea salt, wide-eyed and beautiful. He’s staring at Porter like he can’t believe he’s real. “Fuck, you, _fuck_.” 

Porter pulls off a little, smiles around the head of Dillon’s dick. He tongues at the slit, relishes the way Dillon’s thighs go tight under his fingers. The salt taste intensifies and he laps after it a moment longer. 

“ _Porter_ ,” Dillon says and it’s hoarse. The hand lands in Porter’s hair again, fingers winding through and tugging. It doesn’t press at all but Porter goes back down anyway, shaft sliding heavy across his tongue until head hits the back of his throat and he pauses, hollows his cheeks and bobs slowly. 

It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, Dillon filling his mouth, his hand in Porter’s hair guiding him up and down so gently. It feels so good and he palms himself through his pants, rocks up against his hand and braces himself against Dillon’s thigh, trusts Dillon to guide him. Above him Dillon’s making sweet little noises, soft breathy sighs almost startlingly quiet. Not what he’d expected, somehow, he’d expected Dillon to be as loud in this as in all things. 

It’s better, like this. It’s intimate, the obscene slick noises of Porter working Dillon’s cock weaving into Dillon’s breathing, soft moans, the cars outside, the hum of the ceiling fan. Nothing like a dream except in the dreamy ease of it, that there’s nothing but the two of them and the floor beneath Porter’s knees. He can feel his throat opening, Dillon’s dick sliding in easier and easier, until his nose is brushing rough curls and he pauses for a moment to take in the feeling of being so full. 

Dillon curses. He sounds so desperate, voice breaking. Porter wants to smile but he pulls back instead, returns to bobbing gently and rolling his hips up against his own hand. It’s a delicate balance and he sinks into it, how good it feels until Dillon’s hand is tugging on his hair, pulling him back up a little. 

“Fuck,” Dillon is gritting out when Porter manages to listen, “Porter, you, I’m gonna-,” 

Porter gags a little, pulls off to ask and Dillon makes a sound like he’d been punched. Porter closes his eyes just in time for something hot to splatter across his face, dripping over his mouth and nose. It doesn’t stop and he realizes belatedly, realizes it’s Dillon _coming_ on him. The hot liquid rolling down his face is Dillon’s come. 

He opens his mouth and the last drops fall in his mouth, a burst of bitter salty flavor that makes him gasp, he’s panting for air, he can’t believe how good Dillon’s come feels on him. 

When he opens his eyes Dillon’s clinging to the dresser with white knuckles, staring down at him slack-mouthed. He breathes in belatedly, a shuddering inhale that rattles the dresser. Porter can’t slow his breathing, wants to reach into his pants and cup his dick for some kind of relief because he can’t _think_ , Dillon just _came on his face_. 

It feels like the best kind of filthy. 

“Jesus, I’m sorry-,” Dillon begins and Porter shakes his head dazedly, reaches up and draws his fingers through the come still dripping from his cheek. It’s going cool and when he puts his fingers in his mouth the flavor is just as intense as before and he moans around his fingers. He wants Dillon to come in his mouth again, suddenly. 

“Holy fuck,” Dillon says and then he’s dropping to his knees with Porter, a hand coming up to cup his wrist and the other scrabbling at his fly. Suddenly Porter’s fingers are fucking into his mouth, an echo of Dillon’s dick, and then his pants are undone and he’s bucking up against the sudden lack of restriction. 

“Is this okay?” Dillon asks hurriedly and Porter sobs out a moan around his fingers, nods quickly. Dillon’s hand is at his waistband a moment later, pulling down gently. Porter does his best to help, lifts his hips and ends up thrusting up against nothing because he _needs_ friction, needs to come so badly it’s searing through him. He cries out when the waistband brushes over his erection, a moment of pleasure and relief and then gone. 

Dillon pulls his fingers from his mouth and then his mouth is brushing over Porter’s. He has to taste of Dillon’s come but he doesn’t seem to care, a hand coming up to wrap in Porter’s hair and pull their mouths together again. For a moment Porter can feel himself calming, settling into the motion of kissing Dillon, loops a shaky hand around Dillon’s shoulder for something like balance. 

Then Dillon’s hand closes around his dick and he almost screams, barely muffles himself against Dillon’s mouth. He has to buck into it, can barely find a rhythm with the motion of Dillon’s hand but it doesn’t matter. Orgasm’s been building in him for what feels like days, pushing him higher and harder and more desperate until it feels like he can’t breathe, until he knows he must be tearing up. 

Orgasm slams through him and he thinks he must cry out but he’s too far gone, vision whiting out for a moment. 

When he comes back to himself Dillon’s got his arms around him, supporting his limp body. He starts when Porter moves, helps him sit up. Porter feels boneless, wrung out in a way he’s never felt before. 

Dillon’s watching him carefully when he finally gets around to lifting his head and the smile he returns when Porter grins exhaustedly is brilliant. 

“Hey, pretty boy,” he asks teasingly and Porter snorts, shoves his face away with a clumsy hand. 

“You’re a dick,” Porter tells him. With the motion the come drying on his stomach pulls and he realizes his pubes are sticky with come. There’s a tight pull across his face that tells him he’s still got Dillon’s come drying there too. He’s a mess and it’s satisfying but it’s also starting to itch a little. 

“I want a shower and a nap,” he informs Dillon and starts trying to get back up. It’s slow going but then Dillon’s hands are at his waist, lift him to his feet, and he laughs despite himself. It’s easy and his heart is fluttering, he wants to pull Dillon in and never stop kissing him. 

“Let’s get to it,” Dillon says.

-O-

Porter wakes in the dimness of his apartment and for a moment, soft and dizzy, he doesn’t know what had woken him. He blinks, rubs his eyes against the shift of shadows cast through his window. Everything is so blurry, foreign and far away.

He’s almost asleep again when he hears it, a faint scratching behind him. 

He turns over to look, slow and clumsy, and tries to scream. 

Nothing comes out and he gasps soundlessly for air, tries to drag noise out of himself and gags on it. Nothing will come, nothing but the faint whistle of his panting breathing. His lungs hurt with stinging abruptness, the trapped shriek, the scream for help. He tries again and it’s the same, tears building in the corners of his eyes with how much it hurts and the fear building rabid and eviscerating in his chest. 

There’s someone crouching outside his window, hands braced against the glass. 

Someone or maybe something, something with hands forming fists against the glass. Something he can’t see more of than a dark outline against the neon and streetlights behind it, stumpy legs and skinny arms and broad, hunched shoulders. As he stares it lifts a fist and smashes it against the window. 

It makes no sound and Porter hauls in another breath that burns in his throat, tries again to scream. Still nothing comes out, voice trapped in his lungs, and tears spill over onto his cheeks. 

The thing lifts its fist again and slams it against the glass, still noiseless. 

The glass bends in. 

It bends like plastic, like rubber. Warping, shining in the light, outlining the inhuman jut of the thing’s knuckles, the jagged tips of its fingernails. Flashing details, lost as Porter thrashes and tries to sit up. It looks like if the thing just kept pushing it could break right through and Porter doesn’t know what it would do to him but there’s nothing but blank terror pounding in his chest. 

He tries to scream a final time as he scrambles back, away from the thing, and a thin thread of sound escapes his lungs as his hand meets empty air and he tumbles backwards off his mattress. 

He comes awake with a gasp for air, a rasping scream that fades into silence. 

He’s in a nest of knotted blankets, damp with sweat and tangled around his legs. The lights outside his window are shining and he blinks at them slowly, uncomprehending. 

There’s nothing there. 

He breathes out a shaky breath and then flinches when his neighbor pounds on the wall once, angrily. 

“Just a nightmare,” he whispers and wraps his arms around himself. He wants to call Dillon, he thinks dimly. He wants to call… he wants to call anyone, but he balks at the idea of calling someone in North Carolina for something as trivial as a nightmare. Dillon would want to laugh and that’s better than worry and quiet reminders he always has a place back home. Dillon’s laughter would make the dream seem less real. 

He can’t go home anyway. This had been his dream. This whole city, this whole life. What he’d wanted. He can’t leave it behind. 

Porter turns over to face the window and tightens his arms around himself, stares out at the neon until it dims and blurs in his vision. Until sleep starts to slip over him, dark and quiet and not at all reassuring.


	6. it's coming - robert oaks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after a whole year the evil is defeated, the evil being this fic. shouts to moliver for more or less dragging me over the finish line and being a kickass beta!
> 
> !! GRAPHIC GORE WARNING LADS I'M TELLING YOU NOW !!
> 
> enjoy xoxo

It doesn’t end. 

He wakes and falls and wakes again, the screams dying on his tongue and never passing his lips. The thing is at his window again and again until it’s a more of a shock when he opens his eyes and it _isn’t_ there. 

It’s not a relief. He thinks deliriously that at least when he can see the thing he knows where it is. When it’s gone from his window it could be anywhere. In the street. At his door. In his apartment. 

Eventually he drags his body to the corner farthest from the window, curls up there and stares at it. Like this he can see nearly everything except the kitchen behind him, blocked by the little wall he can remember being so bitter about. It feels like a lifetime ago. 

He tries not to imagine the thing crouching behind it. Tries not to imagine its hands wrapping around the corner of the wall. He can’t imagine what its face looks like but he can feel its eyes on him anyway. 

He stares at the window.

-O-

He wakes with a jolt and scrambles away from the corner.

Blind terror is pounding through him and he doesn’t remember _why_ , there’s danger here, he’s in danger- 

His shoulder slams into a chair and he falls sideways, scrabbles around on the floorboards for a moment more and then lays still. Tries to absorb the sheer size of the pain and exhaustion laying over him like an oppressive fog. Stares up at the ceiling, sobbing for breath, heart pounding tiredly in his chest. His eyes are leaking, aching with fatigue, the trickle too slow and even to call tears. It’s hot and bitter running from the corners of his eyes and across his temples. 

Eventually he struggles over onto his side and curls up tightly. His shoulder is throbbing where he’d slammed into the chair and his head is pulsing in sympathy, not pain so much as thick sleepless weariness. 

Cold morning light washes his apartment of color when he finally pushes himself up to sit. It feels like ice, like cleanliness.

His blanket is still crumpled in the corner. His sheets have pulled free from half the corners of his bed in a rumpled mess of fabric. The chair he’d knocked into is on its side. It must have fallen but he can’t remember hearing it happen at all. 

He pushes it away weakly with his foot. His body aches, hours spent on the cold floorboards. Everything feels _wrong_ in the aftermath of terror, a fresh panic attack cooking hot and sticky in the pit of his stomach. His cheeks feel raw when he knuckles at them and his hands smell like salt, like brine. 

He lowers his hands into his lap and watches them shake with distant, scientific curiosity. 

It takes him an hour to get himself moving, to gather his blanket from the corner and leave it a crumpled mass on the mattress. To pour himself a shaking mug of instant coffee. To paw his phone from his rumpled sheets and stare at it until his coffee’s cold and acidic. 

There’s a text notification from Nick. Nothing from Dillon. He wonders if he’s even awake yet. Wonders if he should text him. 

He leaves his phone on the table, topples onto his mattress and curls up and tries to slow his breathing. 

The sun’s up above the sign outside his window when he finally manages to roll over. His heart isn’t any slower in his chest but he thinks this is the best he can do for now, the only thing he can manage. 

It’s noon, he discovers when he gets back to his table and flicks his phone on. He has a few more texts, another from Nick and two from Sonny. One from Dillon. He flicks it open with clumsy fingers. 

_Good morning!!!!!_ and then a string of sun emoji. Porter breathes in and the phone is shaking so hard in his hands. His vision is blurry but his eyes are so dry they ache, hot and itching. 

He thumbs the call button thoughtlessly, lifts the phone to his ear and reaches out with the free hand to run a fingertip over the rim of his cold abandoned mug. The sensation is distant from his body. He’s watching himself from far away. 

Dillon sounds lazy and soft with sleep when he picks up, his hum of greeting slurred and cheerful. He wants the sound of it to make a difference but his hand is winding tighter around his phone, his shaking is getting worse. 

“What’s up?” Dillon prompts sleepily when Porter doesn’t say anything. 

“Can I come over?” he asks and he can’t stop his voice from shaking, almost feels a little bad about it. He doesn’t want to scare Dillon, doesn’t want to worry him. It’s hard not to take the words back as soon as they come out. He doesn’t _want_ this to be real, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He swallows that down. 

“Yeah, dude, of course,” Dillon says and Porter can hear the concerned lilt to his voice even though he’s still sleep-slurred, even through shitty phone speakers. “I’ll pick us up some In-N-Out.” 

“Thanks,” Porter breathes and tightens his arm around his belly. The panic is still fluttering there, a roiling simmer he can’t swallow down. Dillon doesn’t hang up, pauses for a moment of static and fuzzy breathing. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks at last and Porter nearly sobs because he _doesn’t_. He doesn’t want to have to. 

He has to. 

“When I’m there,” he bargains with a laugh he knows Dillon can tell is false. Dillon doesn’t say anything though, doesn’t call him on it, just pauses and then makes a noise of assent. 

“See you in an hour?” Porter asks. 

“Yeah,” Dillon says, voice soothing. “We’ll have a burger and chill and talk, alright?” 

“Yeah,” Porter murmurs and hangs up. His skin is still crawling, he still feels too tight in his own body. The sky outside is bright and blue and clear, the sun shining hard enough to hurt, but he can’t shake the feeling he’s being watched. It’s from every direction, when he twists he can still feel eyes on his back, from every corner and the window and the door. It’s unbearable. 

He wants to call Dillon back. He wants to keep him on the line, keep talking until he gets out onto the street, keep talking until he’s safe in Dillon’s apartment. Until Dillon’s holding him and the feeling finally goes _away_. 

He wants to feel safe. 

He takes a deep breath and forces his shaking hands into motion. Gathers up his phone, his headphones, his charger. His laptop and a change of clothes. Toothbrush, toothpaste. An extra set of boxers, some shampoo. Shoves it all haphazardly into a backpack and zips it closed. He doesn’t want to come home, not tonight. Not ever, really. 

The hallway outside his door is dim and dirty and even more ominous than his apartment had been. He spends a long, long time standing in the doorway, trying to propel himself forward despite the fear. 

It’s empty anyway. No sign of anything except the prickle on his skin that means there are eyes on him even though he’s utterly alone. 

Eventually he gets the door shut behind him. He barely remembers to lock it. His keys rattle with how hard he’s shaking. 

It’s so bright outside. Porter still feels so cold.

-O-

The bus sways and rattles and Porter scratches over the rough grimy upholstery, digs in his nails and smoothes it back down over and over again. The sun hurts his eyes when he glances up, aching and miserable. He’s exhausted.

Tanner answers the door to him with a grin. 

“He should be back in like a minute,” he tells Porter and wanders back to the couch. 

The air is hazy with smoke, with the deep herbal smell of pot, with the smell of Dillon’s apartment. It’s home and Porter curls up in the other corner of the couch and holds his phone in nerveless fingers. There’s a stack of unanswered text notifications and he swipes them all away, taps shakily over to Dillon’s name and pauses there for a moment. 

He should feel safer. Mostly he feels a little sick.

-O-

Tanner shakes him awake and the light outside has shifted just enough for Porter to know he’s slept a while. He’s frowning, eyes bloodshot and unfocused and filled with concern.

“You were, like,” he says and then pauses. Porter stares at him blearily until he shakes himself, pulls himself together. “You were muttering shit in your sleep. Didn’t sound good?” 

Porter heaves out a breath and curls an arm around himself. His heart is pounding too hard in his chest. He can’t remember what he’d been dreaming about. His mouth tastes of sour salt water. 

“Dillon?” he asks even though he already knows the answer, knows Dillon wouldn’t have come home without waking him. Tanner shrugs, confirming. 

“He should have been back, like, a half hour ago,” he says. He looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know, I called him but he wasn’t answering.” 

“Oh,” Porter says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. There’s wet cotton between his ears, something sour and biting on his tongue. His heart is beating too fast. He can’t tell if it’s fear anymore, if there’s more fear. It’s all the same, right now. 

“Yeah,” Tanner says after an awkward beat. He isn’t meeting Porter’s eyes exactly. “You can stick around if you want-,” 

“No,” Porter cuts him off, the word dropping from his lips without conscious decisions. It’s what he wants though, he decides. He can’t stay still. He can’t stay here. “I’ll head home, let Dillon know I was here if he shows up.” 

Maybe he’ll find something along the way. Maybe Dillon will call him, or show up. Maybe when he gets home his apartment will be less horrifyingly empty. 

He hefts his backpack and doesn’t really listen to what Tanner says, following him down the entry hall to the door. He doesn’t have much to say that Porter wants to hear, anyway. The silence when the door closes behind him is the welcome kind.

-O-

He takes the bus home. Lets it sway around him and none of it touches him. The hinges of his jaw ache. It's the ache of exhaustion radiating from his temples, and he can't hold a thought together for a second at a time but it hardly matters.

The anxious fear is bubbling in his chest but if he doesn't think about it then it's not real. There's nothing but his fingertips tapping restless against the window. 

The stairwell is empty but it’s not a relief. 

All he can think about is his feverish thoughts from the night before, like a sick animal. His aching body so hot with fear and sleeplessness, the broken record of paranoia, _when I can see it I know where it is_. The hallway is darker than he remembers it being. 

The panic has settled into his bones, humming and deadening and sick. There’s something wrong. There’s something so wrong he can barely breathe with it. 

His hand is trembling. It’s no longer a convulsive shake, just a fine tremor, and his keys jingle when he lifts them. 

His door is unlocked, he discovers when he tries to turn his key. 

He freezes. The doorknob is so cold under his fingertips and he’d thought the hallway had been deserted but suddenly there are eyes on him again and the panic is flaring through him. He’d thought he’d been dead with it but suddenly it’s a fire through him and he can’t breathe, he can’t see-

He opens the door with movements he sees from outside of himself. Jerky. Robotic. He’s barely in control. The hot roil of dread in his gut. The desire to run. The desire to shake apart, collapse to his knees and beg anything that will listen to let him _breathe_. 

He’d turned the lights off when he’d left - he’s absolutely sure he’d locked the door, he’s _certain of it_ \- and it’s still dark. The only light comes from the his window, the takeout sign buzzing nauseatingly, and he gropes for the lightswitch with numb fingers. 

The apartment is so still. Still and empty. 

His bag slips from his fingers with a thump to land on the floor, and he kicks the door shut behind him. 

The apartment is cold and quiet and again the smell of old water hovers just at the edge of awareness. Old metal, a tang of brine, salt on the tongue. Porter ignores it and works on toeing off his shoes. It’s not real, it’s never real. 

His stomach rumbles and he leans back against the door for a moment, lets his aching body settle into itself. He’s probably hungry but all he feels is nauseous and prickly with exhaustion. Everything is so heavy, tinted dark, the corners of his vision fuzzy. 

Fumbling his phone from his pocket is clumsy and takes too long, frustratingly long. He nearly drops it and grits his teeth when he taps the screen on and he only has a text from Nick. Nothing from Tanner. Nothing from Dillon. 

He’s called Dillon four times already since they’d last spoke but he decides, fingertip hovering over Dillon’s number, one more won’t hurt. He thumbs it and turns his gaze to the window as the dial tone sounds in his ear. The takeout sign is still buzzing, lit against the fading sunset lurid and unreal. 

The cheerful jingle of the call connecting sounds in his ear and a moment later in stereo is Dillon’s ringtone. 

Porter’s phone slips in his cold hand and the repeating echo of the call waiting noise sounds against the corner of his jaw, buzzing and abruptly the only thing that feels real. Dillon’s ringtone sounds again, close by, in the _fucking room with him_. 

_Californication_. He’d always thought it was the funniest thing. 

His toe snags on the edge of his shitty rug. The phone is buzzing his whole body. He doesn’t want to turn the corner, doesn’t want to look into the kitchen. The smell of old water is intensifying in his nose, brine and rot and cold metal. 

The pool of blood is expanding so slowly, but Dillon must have been laying there for a long time. It’s a puddle around him, dark and burgundy under the cruelty of the fluorescent light. 

Porter’s phone hits the floor and slides away. There’s some noise cracking the air, shrill and sobbing, and he realizes it’s himself only distantly. He doesn’t care, is on his knees scrambling across the floor to Dillon. Pressing a shaking hand to his shoulder. He’s kneeling in blood, so much blood, it’s soaking into his pants and coating the palms of his hands. 

Dillon’s so cold and Porter isn’t as slow as he should be in turning him onto his back

Porter realizes he can’t actually have been here very long at all because blood is pouring from the ragged chunk missing from his shoulder too fast. 

He’s breathing, Porter realizes this as he tries clumsily to clamp his hand over the bleeding. His chest is working, hoarse and fitful, his head turning a little against the bloody floor. There’s blood on his cheek, in his beard, all over his neck, thick crimson smears that stick against Porter’s skin. 

The pressure of Dillon’s blood trying to escape against his fingers is so much, too much, he can’t do this alone. 

It hurts to let go, to leave Dillon on the floor and crawl for his phone. He’s crying, he realizes when he has to wipe the tears from his eyes with a dry wrist to see. Bitter, hacking sobs, his chest convulsing. He’s still keening, only manages to pull the noise back into himself when his shaking fingers have thumbed the emergency call on. 

He crawls back with the dial tone buzzing against his fingers, tucks the sticky phone between his shoulder and ear and clamps his hands back over the ragged gap of Dillon’s shoulder. 

“911-,” the woman begins and the awful sobbing noise cracks Porter’s chest open before he reins it back again. 

“Please,” he manages, “He’s, he’s fucking bleeding out, I don’t know what to do, I-,” 

“What’s your address, sir?” the woman asks and he sobs it out, watches Dillon’s blood slipping between his fingers and tries to keep them tight, tries to keep Dillon’s life inside him. The woman is talking to him but he can’t listen, can’t focus. 

“Is he awake?” the woman asks and he jolts. 

Dillon’s eyes are open. 

They’re open and they’re so pale. Bloodshot and too dim, watching Porter as he tries to stem the flow and keep the phone balanced between ear and shoulder, and he doesn’t know how long Dillon’s been awake. He’s watching Porter and there’s some delirious recognition there, something feverish and animal. Porter meets his gaze and his voice fails. 

Dillon’s eyes slip out of focus again and the noise cracks from Porter’s chest, a broken little thing. 

“Please hurry,” he forces out through numb lips and the operator assures him in the calmest tone that help is arriving as fast as it can.

-O-

Everything moves very fast.

The EMT’s slam through his door and take Dillon from his shaking hands and for a moment he fights them, fights to get back to Dillon, his lifeblood had been slipping between his fingers and he needs to _stop it_ -

They’re bandaging Dillon’s shoulder, moving him with brisk care, and Dillon’s eyes are closed again. 

Someone is talking to him, Porter registers dimly. Telling him he has time to change his clothes, to wash the blood from him, if he hurries he can ride along with them. 

They ask him if he has anyone to contact for Dillon. He doesn’t know. 

The EMT’s are talking back and forth outside the bedroom as he rushes through wiping the blood from his hands with the wet wipes they’d handed him, terse technical terms he doesn’t understand. They sound worried, a little unnerved. _Animal bite,_ one says. 

Porter stares down at his own shaking hands, the pink streaks between his fingers. The rims of crimson around his nails. 

It isn’t an animal bite, he tries to say. It isn’t an animal. It isn’t. His throat works and no sound comes out. 

He pulls a new shirt over his head and barely remembers to grab his bag on the way out.

-O-

He waits in the waiting room as they tend to Dillon. Wraps his hands around each other and stares at them, at the little crust of red under his thumbnail. Dillon’s blood, under his nails, on his skin. The ice in his lungs expands and contracts with his heartbeat. Cold edges, pressing rhythmically inside him, keeping the beat of the panic he hasn’t escaped so much as swallowed down until he can trap himself in this silent hospital waiting room.

The walls are serenity green. There are people here that he can’t look at except from the corners of his eyes in careful glances. Little flashes of them, drawn faces and clutched hands. They remind him of himself and he looks back at his hands. 

He flexes his fingers. They’re falling asleep with the strength of his grip, sparking pins and needles. 

When the nurse clears her throat he startles in place, is halfway to his feet before his thoughts quite catch up with him. She’s watching him when he manages to pull himself together and there’s sympathy in her eyes, impersonal, uncomfortable. He hates it, and when she looks down at the sheaf of papers in her hands it’s a relief. 

“Porter Robinson?” she asks and he nods, nods again when she looks up to see. “You came in with Mr. Francis, right?” 

“Yeah,” Porter unsticks his jaw long enough to force out. She doesn’t look sad. Doesn’t look like it’s bad news. She’s smiling at him, and he hates the professional veneer of it but he thinks he’d be able to tell if there were something _wrong_ lurking underneath. 

“Mr. Francis is alright,” she tells him, and his chest hitches. His hands are abrupt fists at his sides. She’s watching him and he’s on the edge of- he thinks he’s about to cry, or scream. He doesn’t know. “You can see him, if you’d like. He’s sedated, but you can see him.” 

“Please,” he croaks. 

He follows her with limbs that feel disconnected from his body, joints too loose. His chest feels carved out and exposed and he thinks he might be shivering. It’s cold in the hospital. It’d been so warm outside, and he hadn’t thought to put on a sweater. 

She takes him to an unobtrusive nurses station, writes out a door number on a scrap of paper for him and doesn’t comment on how his his hands are shaking when he takes it. She watches him go, eyes itching on his back until he turns the corner to the bank of elevators and he’s alone again. 

As alone as he can be. He presses the elevator button. His fingers are still all pins and needles.

-O-

Dillon looks like a stranger in the hospital bed.

He looks small. The room is small but it feels too big, blank walls trapping noise from the hallway against Porter’s ears, air too cold against his arms. The frame of the bed is massive, the chirping machinery ringing the mattress. Dillon’s dwarfed by the neat sheets, the thin blankets tucked over the bumps that are his knees and feet. 

The nurse had said he isn’t in any real danger, not anymore. Porter doesn’t believe it, can’t believe it, can’t slow his breathing. 

Porter looks at the blankets so he won’t look at the thin translucent tubes wrapped around Dillon’s wrist. The crimson blood running down through one of them, viscerally upsetting. The pale bloodlessness of Dillon’s face and the soft lavender shadows under his eyes. 

The bandages wrapped around his shoulder are stark and white and make Dillon’s skin look yellow by comparison. 

Porter takes the hand not wrapped in tubbing like medical vines. Laces his fingers through Dillon’s cold ones and clings tight. The exhaustion is catching up to him. He’s slept so little, he thinks idly back, trying to remember when he’d last slept the whole night through. It’s been days, maybe a week or more… 

A hand on his shoulder shakes him awake. 

He jerks upright, hands clenching into fists around Dillon’s bony fingers, nearly takes off running-

Dillon makes a little noise from the bed and Porter freezes. Watches carefully as Dillon’s eyes flicker beneath their lids and then still again. There’s a women in nursing scrubs watching him when he forces himself to turn away. 

“It’s time for you to leave,” the woman tells him and her tone is kindly but her eyes are steel. 

Porter wants to beg to stay but his voice is caught in his throat. Instead he looks back down at Dillon, his hands loose against the sterile hospital sheets. He looks skinny, sickly, the sallow bloodless skin of his cheeks flushing unhealthy red. 

He doesn’t look peaceful. 

“Yeah,” he says vaguely and looks up at the nurse. Her eyes soften meeting his and she gestures towards the door less sharply this time.

“Come back tomorrow, okay? He should be awake and a lot better,” she tells him and he nods numbly. He still wants to argue. He wants to stay, he doesn’t want to _leave_. His heart speeds at thought of leaving Dillon here without anyone. He doesn’t want Dillon to wake up alone. 

He goes. 

He can’t stand to meet anyone’s eyes, the sympathetic expressions of the nurses or the impersonal curiosity of other visitors or the blank disinterest of the patients he passes in their wheelchairs. 

The elevator doors close behind him and he crams himself into the corner, presses himself back until it feels less like the walls are closing in on him and more like they’re containing him. Keeping him in his body. He wants to scream but he doesn’t, just watches the numbers tick down on the dial until the doors ding and he has to stand up straight. He can’t look crazy, not like he feels, not if he wants to be able to visit Dillon again. 

He breathes in, forces his feet out of the elevator and through the lobby. There are too many people and when he glances around none of them are looking, too absorbed in each other. It helps, he can breathe again, and he makes it through the glass front doors without breaking down. 

It’s warm outside. Sweaty-warm, warm like the late summer afternoon it is. It feels wrong in some way but it’s nice, heating his frigid fingers. 

Porter stands on the sidewalk outside the hospital and stares down at his hands. 

They’re white, pink at the knuckles where he’d scrubbed them raw. He can’t stop remembering the way Dillon’s blood had felt bubbling up between his fingers, Dillon’s life slipping from his hands. He isn’t sure how he’d gotten there in time. He can’t convince himself it’s real, can’t think about anything but the rattling drag of Dillon’s breathing, the soft animal noises of pain he’d made even sedated. 

He takes a convulsive breath and shoves his hands into his pockets, glances up and down the sidewalk. 

His apartment will smell like blood. Like Dillon’s blood. There’s a pool of it on his floor, he can see it so clearly. His own footprints in it. The skid where he’d dragged Dillon flat before realizing the extent of the wound. The paramedic’s footprints too. His pile of bloody clothing in the corner where he’d stripped them off so quickly, changed and raced for the ambulance so at least he’d be able to get into the hospital. 

He hauls in another breath and turns towards the bus stop. Tanner will let him into Dillon’s apartment and he can stay there for the night. He just can’t face the idea of sleeping in his apartment, in the same room as the blood and the ghost of what could have been if he’d gotten home ten minutes later. 

He clenches his hands into fists in his pockets and tries to breathe in against the panic.

-O-

The bus is cold and the windows are all open and there’s something about the wind ruffling his hair that he can’t stand. It’s making his hands curl into involuntary fists, shaking in his lap, but he can’t force himself to get to his feet and close them.

The idea of trying to stand to counterbalance the motion of the bus and apologize to the people he’s reaching past - the idea of _talking_ \- is just too much. 

He forces his fingers to unfurl and presses his nails into his thighs. It doesn’t help much.

-O-

The walk up the stairs to Dillon’s apartment is exhausting and Porter has to lean his shoulder against the wall by Dillon’s door for a minute. His heart is going too fast in his chest, thundering against his ribs even though he’s so numb. He thinks maybe, somewhere in his body, he’s scared. He can’t feel it.

He knocks on the door too softly at first, has to blink and force himself to focus and knock again. 

For a long minute the door stays closed and it occurs to Porter that maybe Tanner isn’t home. Maybe he’s going to have to take the bus all the way home and sleep in the same room as all that blood because he’s so tired, he can’t imagine the effort needed to wash it from the floor and clear the smell from the air. For a moment his head is spinning, running through his options, if he could call Sonny or Adam or maybe Mija, anyone he could stay with instead-

The door opens and Porter nearly topples through it. 

Tanner catches him by the shoulder and Porter stares up at him for a long moment, doesn’t understand. 

“Holy shit dude,” Tanner says and it’s so strange to have someone talking to him that Porter doesn’t even register it for a moment. “You okay?” 

Porter blinks. 

“Dillon’s in the hospital,” he says. His voice doesn’t come out right. Or maybe he’s not hearing things right, his heartbeat is so loud in his ears. 

Tanner stares at him for a moment. His hand is still on the door. He’s wearing the stupidest shirt, Porter thinks distantly. A container of french fries saying _bonjour_ to a taco, the taco replying with _hola_. It looks too small and ill-fitting, like maybe it’d been an old girlfriend’s shirt or something. 

So long as he focuses on these things he doesn’t have to think about Dillon. 

“Jesus,” Tanner says and then his hands are on Porter’s shoulders and he’s being pulled into the apartment. For a moment Porter thinks Tanner’s going to try to pull him into a hug, that he’ll have to explain away the recoil Porter knows he won’t be able to stop in himself. 

He lets Porter go, though. Hovers next to him as Porter walks in but makes no move to touch. 

Porter lets the bag fall from his shoulder to the crook of his elbow. There might be blood on it, he realizes dizzily. He doesn’t remember if he’d dropped it that close to Dillon when he’d realized. His vision stutters for a moment and then he’s leaning against the wall and Tanner’s making an alarmed noise. 

Porter finds his feet before Tanner’s outstretched hand can reach him. 

“I’m okay,” he says. His voice cracks. 

“Right,” Tanner says. His voice is all indelicate, tactless disbelief. He watches Porter like he doesn’t know what to do but he thinks he should do _something_. 

“Is it cool with you if I crash here?” Porter asks. His voice doesn’t crack this time. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” Tanner says and he’s already turning away. He’s animated with something to do, his hands flash out in gestures Porter watches and tries to fathom into meaning. He’s tired, he decides. Nothing seems to be meaning anything. 

He follows Tanner down the hall. 

“I’m sure you can stay in Dillon’s room or there’s the couch,” Tanner’s saying. Porter watches the muscles of his back move, the stringy strands of his bleached hair waving with the motion. “I think I have a sleeping bag somewhere, I can dig it out for you?” 

“I’ll stay in his room,” Porter says. Tanner turns in the living room and nods, knuckles awkwardly at his cheek for a moment. He’s staring but Porter just can’t meet his eyes. 

The room is silent for a moment. 

“I’m gonna go put my stuff in there,” Porter says after the silence has stretched on so long the need to puke rises in him again. 

Tanner bobs a jerky nod and shadows him down the hall to Dillon’s door. The lights inside are off, only darkness coming from under the door. Porter wants to hide in there, tuck himself into Dillon’s blankets and bury himself in Dillon’s smell until the world has moved on without him and he can sleep. 

He turns back to Tanner instead. 

“Anything you need just let me know,” Tanner says awkwardly and waits for Porter’s nod before drifting back down the hall. 

Porter watches him go for a moment and then shakes himself, turns back and pushes open Dillon’s door. 

It smells like him. 

It’s warm and the dim evening sun is framed perfectly through the curtains. Porter closes the door behind him and drops his bag on the ground and stares out at the brilliant sunset, orange and pink and lavender and bloody scarlet. 

He crumples so slowly. Slides to his knees and presses his face to the ground, to the drift of dirty laundry he’s kneeling in. 

He tries to breathe and by the time he manages to haul himself back up the sky outside is dark.

-O-

Tanner tries to feed him in the morning but there’s a hole in the apartment in the shape of Dillon. The shape of his hands cracking eggs in the skillet, his weight against Porter’s side. His laughter filling rooms that are too big now, too empty.

“We, uh, don’t have much food right now,” Tanner offers after rummaging through the fridge and shrugging apologetically. “It was Dillon’s turn for groceries.” 

It’s a mundane thing to be missing. A mundane thing, and not even Porter’s, but he can feel it throbbing painfully as he edges past Tanner to pull a box of saltines from the pantry. It’s not much, but he can’t really afford not to eat. His hands already won’t stop shaking, his heartbeat is too hard in his chest. 

Tanner doesn’t comment, doesn’t stay in the kitchen with him long. He looks tired, and Porter feels a little bit bad. He wonders idly if Tanner could sleep last night or if he stayed awake, if he worried as much as Porter did about Dillon. The droop of his eyelids and the way he slumps against the counter before eventually drifting back towards his room says yes. 

He leaves early but he scribbles out the address and visiting hours of the hospital and tucks it under Tanner’s bong on the coffee table. 

The bus gets him there twenty minutes before visiting hours begin but the nurse at the station is the same one that had ushered him out, looking better rested than she had the night before. He tries to smile at her and her lips thin for a moment before she sighs, shakes her head, points him off down the hallway. 

“Don’t make a fuss,” she warns and he thanks her and tries not to cry, tries not to make her uncomfortable. He knows how bad he looks right now, shaking like a leaf and so obviously exhausted. He’d had to work not to look at himself too long in the mirror this morning. 

Dillon is awake. 

He’s less pale than he had been the night before, a hint of pink in his cheeks, his mouth not so white anymore. Instead he looks bruised, tender at the edges, something marked _fragile, handle with care_. His gaze flickers to the door when Porter opens it hesitantly and 

There’s a moment, a sliver of time too small to be quite real, where he’s only staring. Only waiting on Dillon to move, to speak. To welcome him into the room, anything at all. 

The grin cracks Dillon’s face and time moves again. 

“Hey,” Porter says and his voice is hoarse and he’s only a moment away from crying. He can feel it in his throat, pressing against his eyes. Tears of relief, and it feels like he can finally breathe down in to the bottom of his lungs. 

Somehow he hadn’t been able to believe Dillon would ever wake up again. A stupid thing to believe, maybe, but he had felt Dillon’s life pouring between his fingers and he hadn’t been able to do a single fucking thing to stop it. 

“Porter,” Dillon answers, voice a croak, “C’mere.” 

He’s reaching with the hand not still wreathed in tubing. Gesturing Porter to him, nearly desperate in its force. 

He starts coughing as Porter gets to his bed and Porter hovers for a moment, hand extended to touch, to try to brace him against the force bending his body over. He looks _sickly_ , so far from himself. 

Dillon’s hand catches his wrist, terrifying in its weakness. He looks small in a way Porter still doesn’t know how to handle, dwarfed by the bed and the sheets and the sterile equipment around him. 

“Please,” Dillon manages, voice hoarse, and tugs until Porter sits on the edge of his bed gingerly. 

He doesn’t know if it’s allowed. He _does_ know if it’s what Dillon wants he doesn’t give a shit. 

Dillon keeps tugging until Porter gives up and lays down carefully, thankful to be on the side opposite the injury as he nestles his head against Dillon’s chest. He can kind of hear Dillon’s heartbeat, he realizes dimly. Distant thunder, thrumming reassuring rhythm in his ear. 

He doesn’t notice right away when it begins to pick up speed. Doesn’t notice Dillon’s body tensing, lulled by the warmth and the smell of him and the way his own heartbeat has finally settled back into his body. 

“I saw it,” Dillon murmurs and Porter lifts his head to look. Dreamlike, unreal and blurry, he doesn’t understand until Dillon’s mouth trembles. His eyes are wet and deep and sightless, meeting Porter’s gaze by accident more than any purpose. 

Something had bitten Dillon. Something had ripped a mouthful of flesh from his shoulder, left teeth marks on him. It’s undeniable. Not shadows on cameras or silhouettes under streetlights, but blood and pain and reality now. 

Dillon’s seen it. It’s real. 

“Oh,” Porter says because that’s all he has air for. All he can manage around the pulse of panic knotting itself around his lungs. 

“It wasn’t,” Dillon mumbles and his eyes are still wide, still pale, hazed with pain and medication and delirium. “It, Porter, it wasn’t-,” 

“I know,” Porter answers numbly. 

Dillon quiets, meets Porter’s gaze for a long time. Eventually his hand lifts, dreamlike, to cup Porter’s cheek. 

Porter nearly cries. Nearly breaks in half, shatters open his ribcage. His throat aches with bitter pressure, his eyes burning with the hurt of tears. Eventually he has to blink and one escapes, streaking hotly down his cheek. 

Dillon pulls at him again, tucks him back against his side. He’s skinny with sickness, infection and blood loss still battling his body, but he puts out heat like he’s always done before and under the bitter medical smell he still smells like himself. He still lets Porter tuck his nose against his chest and stay there. 

The nurse wakes him again and this time she’s smiling, eyes sadness instead of steel. Dillon is asleep, stays asleep as Porter climbs out of bed and bends achily to brush a kiss across his slack mouth. His eyes are flickering under bruise-purple lids and Porter wants to wake him, wants to say goodnight, but he lets him sleep instead. 

“We identified the bite as human,” the nurse tells him as she guides him down the hallway to the elevator, and he has to bite down on the flat denial. It isn’t human. It isn’t. “The police are probably going to have some questions, but we have your contact information for that. Go home, get some rest.” 

He doesn’t know what he says in answer but it must be some vague affirmative because she lets him get in the elevator and press the lobby button. 

It’s dark out, he realizes as he makes his way through the lobby. The nurse must have let him stay late, and he thinks stupidly of turning back and thanking her. When he glances over his shoulder though the lobby is mostly empty, a scattering of people and none of them in nurse’s scrubs. 

None of them are looking at him. He pushes through the door to outside. 

The buses have shifted over to their night schedule, and none of them will take him near Dillon’s apartment. He doesn’t have the money for a taxi. He thinks about walking and his whole body throbs in protest. 

There’s a bus that’ll take him to a few blocks from his own apartment. He shuffles to the station next to the hospital and leans against the plastic wall and tiredly waits. He’ll ignore the blood, or maybe just sit in one of the bathroom stalls and try not to fall asleep leaning against the filthy wall. 

He needs to sit down. He’s so, so tired. 

He gets on the bus and he isn’t the only one taking it but it’s far from crowded, few enough that he has the whole seat to himself. 

It feels like it takes hours, hours of forcing himself to stay awake through the sway of the bus and the flash of dim neon past the windows. 

He gets off the bus a stop beyond what he should have, disoriented and flushing when the driver smiles at him. It’s not too far, an extra few minutes at most. He glances up and down the street as he stumbles off the bus. It’s empty, empty of anyone at all, but the streetlights are buzzing down on him. 

He turns as the bus pulls away and starts down the sidewalk. 

There are eyes on him. Eyes between his shoulderblades, itching and paranoid. He aches to turn, aches to look back over his shoulder, but he forces himself to keep going. Forces himself to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. 

He knows this area well. He’s been everywhere, daylight wanderings and his head-down commute home. His feet know the way. 

The business are closed but their window displays are still on. Cheerful, grimy windows of products. The dark punctuation of empty doorways. The lurid neon of the sex shops, the headless mannequins in their dark lingerie. He tries not to look over his shoulder.

He’s making up the footsteps. They’re all in his head. No one had gotten off the bus with him, no one had been on the street. It’s all in his head. 

The street ahead is well-lit, empty of people but wide and easy to see in, but it isn’t his way home. He pauses at the mouth of the alley he needs to turn down, looks at it for a long time instead of over his shoulder. 

The footsteps have stopped. The back of his neck prickles but he swallows, forces himself to step into the dimmer gloom of the alley. He knows this alley, has walked down it so many times before after work, knows the dumpsters pushed back against the wall, the uneven cracks in the dirty pavement. 

There’s a scuffle behind him. He keeps walking, pins his eyes to the light of the street at the other end of the alley. 

A sound, hollow and scraping. Something dragging against a brick wall behind him. The rustle of nylon, and he realizes abruptly that at some point the sound had sprouted from his imagination into undeniable reality. 

He spins and the thing is close enough to him that the smell of old rotting water buffets his face. 

It looks at him and he recognizes it. Recognizes it, though it’s feral and inhuman and its face is awful, a mess of knotted skin and drooping filmy eyes, a slashing knife of a nose. A waterlogged corpse. 

It had been in his dreams. It had been in his stairwell. It had been outside his window, except it hadn’t been a dream, and...

It grins. A slow tilt of thin white lips and then parting over jagged yellow teeth. Its mouth opening and opening and its mouth is black gums and black tongue wiggling wetly at him. Wider and wider, inhuman, impossible. 

There’s a scream trapped in his chest, he tries to drag it out and it catches at the base of his throat. It leaks from his lips thin and quiet. 

It takes a step towards him. It moves at a shamble, legs coming under it almost as if by accident. Its hands are at its side, swaying a little with the motion, hanging from its shoulders loosely. It’s still smiling at him under sightless eyes with its hole of a mouth. 

The scream is still trapped in his body but he needs to-

It isn’t expecting Porter to tackle it and it’s the only reason he succeeds, spilling thrashing across the dirty pavement. 

Spilling across the ground, rolling over each other, the thing under him for a moment feels like wet paper stretched over wet sticks, the steel of tendon stretching as it throws Porter off him the only hard thing in such a nauseatingly corroded body. It scrambles around in the ground trying to right itself. 

Rage, beating into his chest like a second heartbeat, so much fucking anger bubbling up between his teeth as an animal shriek. He dives back onto it, rolls with it for a moment and is thrown off again, gathers himself and drives himself knee-first into its body. 

Something gives under him with a _snap_ and the thing thrashes harder until he can get his legs over it’s upper-arms, sitting solidly on its chest. Its chest is giving slightly, what might be ribs bending under Porter’s weight. It grins up at him, gaping mouth, air whistling silently from its black throat. 

Blunt teeth, _bloodied_ teeth. 

Dillon’s blood, Porter thinks disjointedly. There’s a rock within arm’s reach, blocky and rough and Porter grabs it. It feels light in his hands and the thing’s scrabbling against the ground again and straining up against Porter’s legs, trying to dislodge him and Porter can feel the corded power in the skinny limbs under him, it’s going to throw him off in a moment-

The first blow breaks what had been a nose, crushes it flat in a gush of fluid and ripped skin and meat. The noise is awfully wet. 

Porter squeezes his eyes shut. Brings the rock down again and hears bone give with a noise so sharp he can’t believe it’s real, shockingly bright noise against the roar of everything else. The creature’s still struggling against him but it’s weakening, Porter can _feel_ it weakening and he risks opening his eyes. 

He slams them shut again. The thing’s face is a mess of blood and broken teeth, white bone had been showing through, it’s mouth had been open and gaping in a silent scream and he can’t watch this, can't watch his hands lift the rock and bring it down again, again, again. Until the arms under his knees have stopped moving, until the fast jump of the chest under him has quieted. 

The anger still thunders inside him and he brings the rock down a final time, lifts it up just in case. The sound is wet but there’s no bone left to snap and he gags, opens his eyes at last. 

The rock is suddenly so heavy in his hands that they fall together into the mess with that same wet sound that hurts to hear. 

What remains looks nothing like a human. Nothing like a head, or what had once been a horrifying parody of a face. There’s nothing, nothing but tender pink meat and white shards of bone and greyish jelly and thick pinkish blood, the wrong color. Too pale, too thick. It’s like honey running down his arms, less like blood and more like thick, briny puss. He can feel it on his face, warm, nothing like human blood. 

Nothing like Dillon’s blood, so vitally hot when he’d been struggling to stop the gush of it. 

He sobs for air and realizes abruptly that he’s crying. He doesn’t know when he’d started or how to stop and he lets go of the rock with numb fingers. Tries to rub a wet cheek against his shoulder and realizes there’s blood there too, smearing from his shirt onto his face. 

Everything smells of stagnant water and rotting vegetation. Like copper, and under it all the sweet burn of fruit gone soft. 

He lifts himself clumsily off of his seat, off the ribcage he thinks he must have broken in landing on it the way he did. It doesn’t matter. He can’t breathe, wants to press his hands to his face but when he lifts them there’s that pinkish blood, thick and coating his fingers, the meat under his nails-

He throws up with a suddenness that distantly surprises him.

It bends him over and he heaves and sobs and heaves until the muscles of his stomach ache and he's dizzy with lack of air. It's mostly watery bile; he hasn’t eaten much for days and he thinks about that, inanely. Thinks of the saltines, eaten in lieu of any kind of comfort while waiting for visiting hours to begin. 

He coughs out more bile, manages to take a breath and the smell of brine and puke makes him choke. He crawls away, blindly feeling his way past the corpse of the thing, whatever it _had_ been, away from it and the vomit and the smell. 

His throat hurts, his eyes burn. He still can’t stop crying, sobbing helplessly, convulsively. The blood is itching on his forearms. He rubs at it mindlessly as he cries. His hands are already so dirty, he doesn’t know what a little more or less could hurt. 

Eventually he stands, manages to get his feet under him and weave his way to the mouth of the alley. The tears have slowed with the thick ache of dehydration, numbness stealing through his chest and swallowing everything down. 

His apartment is right across the street and he stares at it for a long, long time. Knows that there’s a puddle of Dillon’s blood drying on the floor. That it’ll have soaked into the cracks in the linoleum, the legs of the table and chairs, the carpet he’d bought for five dollars from the thrift store on the corner. That it smells like Dillon's blood. Copper and electricity. 

He looks back down at his hands. At the cartoonish color of the blood on them. He doesn’t look like he’s just committed murder, he realizes dimly. He looks like he’s rolled in watery paint. His eyes feel hot and itchy. 

He makes his way across the street. 

The apartment doesn’t smell as much as Porter had feared, when he finally fumbles the key into the lock and gets inside. He doesn’t linger, forces himself not to look at the blood, reaches for his soap and heads right back out for the bathroom. He doesn’t bother to lock the door. He’s not scared; he doesn’t know what will ever scare him anymore. 

In the wake of the fear is the numbness, and trying to understand what he’d done. 

He’d needed to do it, he thinks as he steps into the shower. The water is hot and he stands under it for a long time, lets it beat down on his shoulders, watches the pink blood wash down the drain. He had to do it. He couldn’t have done anything else. 

He takes in a deep breath and thinks of Dillon. 

When the water’s started running cold and the blood is only a sense memory on his skin he steps out, reaches mechanically for his towel and dries himself off slowly. Everything feels slightly hollow. Something’s missing from the air. 

Porter catches a glimpse of motion in the mirror. Takes a deep breath and meets his own eyes and it’s a sense of vertigo that nothing about him has changed. Filmy, drooping eyes, skin sallow and pale with exhaustion and sickness. A slashing knife of a nose. His hair a dark swoop against his forehead. 

There’s blood in the corner of his mouth, the thing’s blood. Pink and tacky and he jerks to rub it away, a bolt of panic and nausea leaving him clutching the edge of the sink and trembling. 

He gets moving eventually. One foot in front of the other. 

The pool of blood is smaller than he remembers it, when he makes his way back to the room. He doesn’t look at it too closely. It’s easier to focus on packing some clothes into his backpack, throwing his laptop and chargers in after them, his toothpaste and toothbrush. It’s a moment of déjà vu he fights off, breathes through. 

The sun is rising above the buildings when Porter pushes through the door and he stands in the doorway for a long moment and just watches it, the blue lightening in the sky. The soft washes of pink and lavender and orange. 

The street smells of fog off the water.


End file.
